Technosaurs.

Soviet era aircraft image credit: Ron Caswell.

Today, one cant help marvel at some of the technical wonders Humankind has produced during a relatively brief reign. Compare that reign to dinosaurs which had existed for millions of years. Man developed tools which sat him apart from Earths other species. Collectively, tools become technology and technology enables man to do what other creatures cannot. If it is true dinosaurs were wiped out by an impact with a Comet or an Asteroid. They were not prepared! Millions of years did not allow dinosaurs to develop beyond that of sophisticated eating machines.

 

Humans on the other hand, developed rapidly to the point that we can destroy life on Earth without an asteroid. Man has developed technology that produces many items of benefit. Technology which has escalated with each major improvement throughout the last three centuries. Inevitably, in some areas, technological progress has slowed down. Have we in the U.S. even the world, hit a technology plateau? Consider the following. During World War II and soon after, the U.S. Western Europe, and Russia began developing jet aircraft, computers, radar, and especially rockets.

 

By the sixties, the moon race was on. Even the race for a SuperSonic Transport (SST) was on in the U.S. Russia, Britain, and France. The U.S. and Russia were even conducting HyperSonic Transport (HST) research and the U.S. targeted 1976 for initial SST service. HST service was projected in the early nineties based on mid sixties projections.

 

The moon race wasn't the only manned program the U.S. wanted to implement. The 1969 space task force chaired by then Vice President Spiro Agnew, foresaw a lunar base, nuclear shuttles and a fifty man Mars base. All by 1989. Popular culture portrayed a future full of technical advances (Unless you saw Mad Max or Planet of the Apes). The seventies changed all that and the changes are still with us. An example being the popularity of dystopian future movies. The only commercial SST that ever flew regular service was the British French Concorde. That ended on 26 November 2003 following the 25 July 2000 crash of a Concorde and subsequent evaluation. The Concorde was retired after the combined effects of its only hull loss crash and the post 911 airline industry economy. U.S. SST research didn't stop after the 1971 cancellation of the Boeing 2707-300. Periodic SST research continues to this day but no operational SST is in sight.

 

The U.S. space shuttle was developed but never achieved its planned flight rate. The space shuttle was a technical success but an economic failure. Russia, Japan, and Europe had space shuttles in the works. The only nation outside the US to have flown a shuttle was the Soviet Union which flew its shuttle Buran. It was flown only once, and finally abandoned in the wake of the Soviet Unions collapse. Japan and Europe have abandoned their space shuttle programs and the U.S. tried replacing the current shuttle with vehicles such as the X-30 (Orient Express), shuttle 2, and X-33. All eventually cancelled. Cheap access to space eludes the best minds in aerospace engineering once again! Nuclear power, nuclear fusion (remember cold fusion?) is still decades away from practical application. We could be on the verge of a new energy crisis. Not a single lesson seems to have been learned from the original ones of 1973-74 and 1979. Until recently, big oil research was aimed at keeping oil flowing, not phasing it out in favor of future energy sources. Electric cars and hybrid car designs are finally being marketed after decades of hype.

Can it fly? Probably, so it will more likely be killed by the barrier above than any technical barrier. Although in the case of Venture Star, a technical problem with the propellant tank design caused the Venture Star to meet the cost barrier.

 

Will the U.S. or any other technically advanced Country finally solve these long standing obstacles? The biggest being the "Cost Barrier"? Some once believed the future to be a pre-ordained event. The reality is that the future is market driven. That's why the 747 became the icon of air travel and the B-2707 is all but forgotten. SSTs were not an economically viable commercial design. What's it all mean? instead of the advances once promised in the sixties and seventies, the U.S. Russia, Europe and Japan are acquiring ever more expensive "Technosaurs" as time moves on.

Dinosaurs lasted a lot longer than technosaurs could possibly last.

 

What is a technosaur? a highly technical project such as an SST that gets developed and reaches a point of maturation and then gets abandoned due to rising costs. The U.S. should take the lead by breaking the cost barrier and moving on to develop cheap access to space. The US is developing energy alternatives, and other cost effective solutions to problems considered largely unsolvable. How to overcome this "Cost Barrier"? That's for the engineers to figure out. The engineering community usually does not have cost containment at the forefront of their designs! Until they do figure out how to eliminate or greatly reduce such automatically built in items like cost overruns. We will not ever see SSTs, Mars bases, fusion power, or many other expensive advances that crash when they meet the "Cost Barrier".