Economist debate on technological progress  Lynne Kiesling
About these ads  5 thoughts on “Economist debate on
technological progress    1. What worries me is that I believe
there is a clear case that innovation has slowed down where
governments have become involved, or where someone has decided
to be afraid.      The Nerva rocket is a classic example. That
was a nuclear rocket (fission, heating hydrogen) that would have
allowed for 38 percent of the start weight of a rocket go up in
orbit as pay load, compared to a measly 6 percent with chemical
rockets. Now, going off into space might not be “useful”, but
the Nerva project was shut down at the beginning of the 1970s
because it worked. And as it worked, people might like the idea,
so Congress cut funding.      Today, without superstitious fear
of “radiation”, the X-prize would have involved Nerva-style
nuclear rockets, or something even better. A trip to Mars was
supposed to have been made in 1985 with two Nerva rockets (for
redundancy). 6 months