Did Heinlein See The Future of the U.S. Auto Industry?

Reader James Blakey reminded us of a bit from Robert Heinlein's 1950s classic "cryogenic sleeper awakes" novel The Door Into Summer that seems especially relevant in these days of Government Motors.

From pages 140-141 of the current edition of the novel, via Amazon's "search inside" function. The 20th century narrator is confused by an element of 21st century auto industry practices, launched by government loans to the auto industry:

The job I found was crushing new ground limousines so that they could be shipped back to Pittsburgh as scrap. Cadillacs, Chryslers, Eisenhowers, Lincolns - all sort of great big, new powerful turbobuggies without a kilometer on their clocks. Drive'em between the jaws, then crunch! smash! crash! - scrap iron for blast furnaces.

It hurt me at first since I was riding the ways to work and didn't own so much as a Grav-Jumper. I expressed my opinion of it almost lost my job….until the shift boss remembered I was a Sleeper and really didn't understand.

"It's a simple matter of economics, son. These are surplus cars the government has accepted as security against price-support loans. They're two years old now and then can never be sold….so the government junks them and sells them back to the steel industry.

You can't run a blast furnace just on ore; you have to scrap iron as well. You ought to know that even if you are a Sleeper. Matter of fact with high-grade ore so scarce, there's more and more demand for scrap. The steel industry needs these cars."

"But why build them in the first place if they can't be sold? It seems wasteful."

"It just seems wasteful. You want to throw people out of work? You want to run down their standard of living?"

"Well why not ship them abroad? It seems to me they could get more for them on the open market abroad then they are worth as scrap."

"What! and ruin the export market? Besides, if we started dumping cars abroad everybody we'd get everyone sore at us - Japan, France, Germany, Great Asia, everybody. What are you aiming to do? Start a war?"

Well, if auto industry practices get as bad as Heinlein guessed here (and his future 2000 in this novel written in the 1950s is already our past), maybe we can just replace cars and roads with nationwide conveyor belts….

See my assessment of Heinlein's importance from Reason magazine back in 2007.

Comments

[Mister DNA]

Apropos of this morning's J.D. Salinger article, it looks someone needs to do a mash-up of Heinlein's The Door Into Summer and Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron.

[Hazel Meade]

Perhaps we can convince Obama to start a penal colony on the moon.

Think of the job creation!

[Franklin Harris]

Well, if auto industry practices get as bad as Heinlein guessed here (and his future 2000 in this novel written in the 1950s is already our past), maybe we can just replace cars and roads with nationwide conveyor belts....

I always thought "Let the Roads Roll" was one of Heinlein's nuttier stories. And, yes, that includes is later stuff.

[peachy]

The Door into Summer has always been one of my favourites - even more so now that I have cats. (Makes the ending even sadder, though.)

Never been as fond of "The Roads Must Roll", though I haven't read it in a few years.

[Tulpa]

Indiana pensioners -- YOU LOSE!

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for Chrysler LLC's sale to Fiat, turning down a last-ditch appeal by opponents that included consumer groups and three Indiana pension plans.

[SugarFree]

Currently re-reading my way through the juveniles. Heinlein always rewards re-reading. I'll probably swing way through the mom-fucking novels before the month's over.

About ten years ago I settled on Tunnel In The Sky as my favorite work. If you haven't, I highly recommend.

[Isaac Bartram]

Indiana pensioners -- YOU LOSE!

Would've thought that Ruth Bader Ginzberg would've been the only Justice who believes in the sanctity of a contract.

Unfair, of course, there may have been others but just not enough.

Actually, I seem to recall having read somewhere (can't remember now) that when it comes to commercial and contract matters RBG is completely solid. Who'd've thought that on a "conservative" court she' wouldn't get enough support?

[Colin]

I would love to buy an Eisenhower.

[Tulpa]

I like how they refer to it as "Chrysler's sale to Fiat" rather than "Chrysler's sale to the UAW", which would be a more accurate description.

[shrike]

Bankruptcy effectively invalidates contracts, Mr. Bartram. The Indiana folks bought junk bonds at a steep discount because there was a distinct probability of default. These creditor cramdowns happen frequently.

It appears that the SCOTUS justices voted in unanimity.

[Lester Hunt]

I've loved Door Into Summer since the ninth grade, when it was actually fairly new. It has one of the best treatments of the paradoxes of time travel in fiction.

[chimpy]

so what happens to the cars? there's loads of em out there? is there a firesale? did i miss it?

[Tulpa]

shrike,

Please stop pretending you know the first thing about bankruptcy laws rather than being a garden-variety partisan shill. You'll only make a fool of yourself.

[Tulpa]

It's amazing that it took 24 hours for the SCOTUS justices to figure that case out, when shrike came to a conclusion with one mere sentence! Of course, they actually had to consider the normal procedures of bankruptcy cases, and quibble over the nuances of secured vs. unsecured creditors and such, while shrike just has to look at which side Obama's on to decide the case.

[felinefisting]

Later that night, a food vendor had a sign up that said; "SHOW YOUR TITS, get FREE cheese fries." The many beers I drank helped when I ran up in front of the line and yelled "If my husband shows his PENIS, can I get FREE fries?" and my husband lifted up his shirt! Hilarious! Of course, we were turned down and my husband dragged me off while I yelled obscenities to the owner. The sign was down the next day, I hope I helped.. Anyone have any similar festival stories?

[shrike]

Tulpa-

The federal bankruptcy judge and the circuit court had already ruled on the legality of the cramdown. The SCOTUS play was a hail-Mary based primarily on TARP issues - which provided the only unique angle not routinely faced by bankruptcy courts.

You're the one that has demonstrated complete ignorance on this topic.

[Tulpa]

Strangely, shrike, you didn't address the relative priority of secured and unsecured creditors (and those who are not creditors at all, such as the UAW) in a typical bankruptcy case. One would think that one with your preeminent expertise in this field must have addressed that issue in your decision somehow.

[alan]

Hazel Meade | June 9, 2009, 8:35pm | #
Perhaps we can convince Obama to start a penal colony on the moon.

Think of the job creation!

So long as they don't hurl shit back down on us, comrade, I am okay with that.

[alan]

Of course, we were turned down and my husband dragged me off while I yelled obscenities to the owner. The sign was down the next day, I hope I helped.. Anyone have any similar festival stories?

Way to turn something beautiful (public breast exposure) into something ugly (possibility of free range wieners).

[shrike]

Strangely, shrike, you didn't address the relative priority of secured and unsecured creditors (and those who are not creditors at all, such as the UAW) in a typical bankruptcy case. One would think that one with your preeminent expertise in this field must have addressed that issue in your decision somehow.

Unsecured creditors are routinely put in front of secured creditors in order to salvage the firm in Chapter 11 REORG - see the Critical Vendor Clause. In fact - here is sample of Chryslers--

"Vendors in the Critical Vendor program will receive accelerated payment in full of
Chrysler's pre-bankruptcy obligations, but must accept some significant, and potentially
onerous, conditions described below. If Chrysler decides to "assume the contract" with
the vendor (i.e., to continue purchasing the parts post-bankruptcy), a vendor declining to
participate in the Critical Vendor program should get paid the same amount on its pre-
bankruptcy claims at a later date. If Chrysler opts not to assume the contract, then the
vendor declining to participate in the Critical Vendor program is at risk of recovering
substantially less than the full amount of its claims. In certain circumstances, it may be
better to participate in the ASSP or reject both programs."

I worked through a few contract issues as a critical software ERP vendor. Companies can't operate without ERP.

Now shut the fuck up.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

What really dates this passage is that "kilometer" reference. It's 50+ years on and the American people are still holding out against the metric conspiracy.

[Grandpa Simpson]

My car gets 8 furlongs to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!

[kohlrabi]

Tim,

Good thing, too, nobody wants to order 473.176473 ml of Honker's Ale or 568.261485 ml of Guinness.

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

In Germany they don't get away with shorting you even a single micro liter when it comes to a brew.

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

Re: resistance to going SI units, I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that the good old USC system of units is just way more human-oriented.

They say SI units are "easier" to work with but I know better, having taught undergrad engineering courses. With USC units my students used to screw up fluid mechanics problems by leaving out a factor of 32.2 somewhere.

Then I gave an exam in all SI units and got to watch my students sitting there counting decimal places. Is the answer .01, or .1, or 1.0? Gee, dunno.....

With SI units people screw up by an order of magnitude, or two or three, instead of a factor of 32.2. Plus with SI units I had senior mechanical engineering students who did not have a clear grasp of the difference between mass and inertia. Because they'd grown up on SI units, and in SI you rarely have to account for it explicitly in your unit analysis -- something you can't get away with using US customary units.

Which always gave me an easy way to put a nice ball-buster on the final. 🙂 I admit it, but then everybody would miss the problem and I'd end up having to curve the class (or get massively chewed out by the department head).

fwiw, in England they still use miles on their highways, which surprised me but they do.

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

More fwiw, the whole aerodynamics field is incredibly resistant to going SI and that's as true of the Brits as it is of us here in the States. Not sure why but aerospace journals are about the only place I can still get away with publishing a paper in good old US customary units.

But then, it's only been a little over five years or so that I could send out drawings for a machined part, and not have to pay a premium if I dimensioned with SI units. Today you can use either units and nobody cares, but it hasn't been that way for very long.

Much of the steam boiler industry will also still let you publish in USC units. I suspect there's a few other odd niches like this that I just haven't stumbled across.

Of course, scientists insist on using cgs units which is a pain in the ass unto itself. But scientists frequently feel the need to distinguish themselves.

[Jeff P]

You mean to tell me that out of the tens of thousands of science fiction books and stories that pre-date the current economic crisis, a lone dramatic speculation about the future is actually remotely close to the truth?

Preposterous!

Now excuse me, I need to telecommand my housebots to recompile the front lawn while I maneuver my monopod onto the maglev hoverway...

[Jeff P]

By the way, that last sentence was dedicated to Stevo.

[Brandybuck]

Of course, scientists insist on using cgs units which is a pain in the ass unto itself.

As a stupid liberal arts major, I'm not seeing much difference between CSG and SI. Looking up in a CSG to SI conversion chart, I see:

1 cm CSG == 10^?2 m SI
1 g CSG == 10^-3 kg SI
1 s CSG == 1 s SI

Well... duh!

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

Tim,

Last fwiw on going metric, there is in fact a rational reason the US has resisted and that's the cost of re-tooling US industry across the board. We'd have had to throw away billions of dollars worth of manufacturing machines, machine tools, and instrumentation.

It would have cost a fortune 20 years ago. Simple things like replacing a few shingles on the roof of your house would get complicated if they changed shingle sizes to SI units, just for one example.

The cost of going all metric today is far from zero, but it's nowhere near as much as it would have been even a decade ago. Think about the installed base of precision machinery in this country. It's huge.

Today everything has gone to digital I/O and computer controls, and programming in either/or metric or USC units is no big deal now. These kinds of machines are now becoming the norm as older machines wear out and get replaced.

But it hasn't been easy to do either system of units for very many years. In the old days when you built a machine, you built it in some system of units, and that's what the machine would be for ever more.

We will eventually go SI now, just because so many companies are international. But the big drop in SI resistance that I've seen in US industry in recent years has far more to do with the rise of computer controls and digital instrumentation, than any other single factor, because that's what drastically cuts the cost of going SI.

The way we're going to go SI in the US, is probably about the most cost effective way that it could have been done. I'm really glad the government didn't get more heavy handed about it, myself.

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

Well... duh!

To those who are not hard core designers, and especially not designers of machines/devices/etc that people's lives depend on, it may not sound like any big deal. But in the real world, consistency in units is a virtue.

Because if you mix SI and cgs units then you end up with extra factors of 10, 100, 1000, etc, floating around in your calculations. It is so very, very easy to make mistakes this way. And it happens.

Airplanes have gone down and buildings have collapsed because of calculation errors like this. I mean that literally.

[dfd]

Airplanes have gone down

Really? When?

Plus with SI units I had senior mechanical engineering students who did not have a clear grasp of the difference between mass and inertia. Because they'd grown up on SI units, and in SI you rarely have to account for it explicitly in your unit analysis -- something you can't get away with using US customary units.

What difference would a mechanical engineer ever care about? How is it explicitly accounted for in customary but not SI units? Clearly you're not stating that gravitational mass is different from inertial mass, so what do you really mean?

Which always gave me an easy way to put a nice ball-buster on the final. 🙂 I admit it, but then everybody would miss the problem and I'd end up having to curve the class (or get massively chewed out by the department head).

If it's such an important distinction (which I can't see for the life of me why it would be for anyone not on the cutting edge of physics) wouldn't you have better prepared your students to recognize such a distinction by addressing the concept in class? If not, then it doesn't belong on an exam simply to trick them at the end on a trivial distinction. That's just being a prick, no offense, and the department head would be right to chew you out for it.

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

It doesn't sound like you know the difference between mass and inertia yourself.

An object weighs "x" on earth. What does it weigh on the moon? What does it weigh when it's 600 feet below the surface of the ocean?

Now that we've established the empirical fact that things have differing apparent weights in different environments, here's the trick question: has the inertia of this same object changed in these different environments?

Answer to trick question: nope, inertia hasn't changed.

If you're designing moving machine parts, that can matter a whole lotta lot.

A pound mass equals a pound force, but only at sea level on earth. Under any other conditions, a pound mass and a pound force are not equal and you must account for the difference when considering structural loads, and especially in any kind of dynamic problems.

In USC units, the way you have to do unit conversions, this little fact of life stares you in the face every time you set up a calculation. You cannot pass undergrad thermodynamics (in mechanical engineering anyway) without understanding this, when working with USC units. But with SI units you can do the unit conversions and not understand what's really going on here. It's just the way SI units work, a kg looks like a kg.

I'll have to email you some equations with simple sample calcs if you want to understand it in any more detail than that.

Trust me when I say that. I wasn't just being a prick to my students, I was pointing out something that nobody should get their BSME degree without understanding.

The department head would have chewed me out for bring the grades down across the board, that's where the beef would have been. I could throw as many hard problems at them as I wanted, just as long as I curved the average when I was done.

So I did. Because a low grade never fails to get the attention of a student that gives a crap at all. You can bet those who care, won't make that mistake a second time.

Mechanical engineers design cars, airplanes, and other heavy machinery. The kind of machinery that can kill people.

I for one am not interested in handing a BSME to student that doesn't give a crap. So if I have to be a prick to shock them into paying attention to crucial details, so be it.

You and I may both be depending on something that student designs into some car few years from now.

We work very hard at making sure we don't graduate idiots from engineering programs.

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

dfd, to try and make it simple, there is a difference between the mass of an object, and it's apparent weight in any given environment. In aerospace and ocean engineering, that difference is important.

With SI units you can do all your calculations purely in terms of mass, so it's easy to miss what that really means in terms of weight (which then translates into the forces that we use for loads on structural elements, power requirements for motors, brakes, and shock/impact absorbers, etc).

Sure, if you actually do all your calculations correctly in SI, you'll still get the right answer. But you have to be aware of what's going on in order to get the calculations right.

[dfd]

It doesn't sound like you know the difference between mass and inertia yourself.

An object weighs "x" on earth. What does it weigh on the moon? What does it weigh when it's 600 feet below the surface of the ocean?

I may not know the difference, philosophically it is the subject of some debate of course, but I don't think it's what you're explaining. I'd say you're confusing the difference between weight and mass with inertia. Inertia is, simply stated, the principle that an object tends to resist changes in its momentum. If I know an object's mass in SI units I know all I need to know (for any practical engineering problem) about its inertia. Its weight is indeed different on the Earth or Moon or Mars, but its mass is not and its inertia is not. This is at least as clear in SI as it is in customary units.

But to be clear, yes, I certainly understand the distinction between weight and mass, and therefore the distinction between the lbf and lbm. Now that I know that's what you were talking about I agree that distinction should be clear to any mechanical engineering graduate and I'd be surprised if it wasn't.

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

There was an aerospace engineer back in the '50's who screwed up a flight load calc and the wings snapped off an experimental airplane. Sorry but it's been a while since I was in academia, I don't remember and it would take me a while to dig it up again.

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

Now that I know that's what you were talking about I agree that distinction should be clear to any mechanical engineering graduate and I'd be surprised if it wasn't.

🙂

I was surprised too, but that's what I found out was going on when I got my first couple batches of students who had come all the way up primarily on SI units.

I'm not sure but they may have started emphasizing this point a little better after we profs figured out what was going on. Not sure because I soon after left and went into industry.

[dfd]

There was an aerospace engineer back in the '50's who screwed up a flight load calc and the wings snapped off an experimental airplane. Sorry but it's been a while since I was in academia, I don't remember and it would take me a while to dig it up again.

Oh I can believe it, no need for a citation. 🙂 I just wasn't aware of it off the top of my head and I have some interest and knowledge of aircraft accidents and investigations, but mostly from the 70's on so it isn't surprising that I don't know about that one.

Of course a prime example of an SI vs. customary units problem was the Mars Climate Orbiter (or whatever it was called) that was lost due to confusion between two groups using different units. At least nobody's life was at stake in that one - just a hundred million dollars or so. 🙂

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

For Obama that's mere pocket change.

[The Bearded Hobbit]

Just to throw another version of what I believe Mr. Scrooge is saying here, Engineering became a bit easier to screw up when we gave up our slide rules.

Using a slipstick forces one to keep track of what's going on; where the decimal point lies and orders of magnitude, for example. It tends to equalize the running error as you go along with three- to four-digit accuracy (generally enough for the "real world").

I had one prof who got really carried away with his significant digits. If a calculator went to all that trouble to give you 12 digits, you'd better have all twelve digits on the test paper. One particular problem looked odd and a side calculation showed that along about digit six or seven we went past the fundamental charge of the electron!

Oh, and St. Heinlein is always right. His timing might be a little off.

.. Hobbit

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

Yup! Computers are better than coffee. We can now screw up better and more completely than it was ever possible to do before.

Then again, it's also gotten much cheaper to measure a draft beer right down to the micro liter. Right before your eyes in the bar. The gains in precision (in terms of reduced cost to achieve it) in the last decade alone are impressive to say the least.

[Neu Mejican]

A recent exchange on H& R:

Neu Mejican | June 8, 2009, 7:20pm | #
Just float it off the coast of Somalia and no government will bother you...

;^)

The tyranny of the condo board will make the federal government seem mild...no?

BakedPenguin | June 8, 2009, 9:50pm | #

The tyranny of the condo board will make the federal government seem mild...no?

Unless condo boards are now sentencing people to five years of being caged, beaten, and raped for taking un-correct substances, then... no.
- - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Does this illustrate:
1) BP has no sense of humor
2) BP has no sense of reality
3) BP has been taking un-correct substances
4) BP assumes that the condo board would not sentence him to 5 years in a raping cage in an anarchistic society free of government jackbooted enforcers= BP is a doe-eyed innocent.

[robc]

5) NM is a cross-posting troll.

Scrooge,

I think the problem is that you dont know the definition of mass.

Mass is mass. SI units make it clear. Any prof who uses pounds-mass instead of slugs needs to be, well, no I cant say it. 🙂

[JOhnny Sacks]

If we are going to point the fingers in the failed auto makers, lets point them in the right direction. The bottom feeding, blood sucking Auto Workers Union! They literally bled the companies dry!

RT
http://www.Absolute-Anonymity.com

[robc]

shrike,

Which of Fiat, UAW, US Government, and Canadian Government are "critical vendors"? None of them are Chrysler vendors even.

[SugarFree]

robc,

I could see an argument that UAW is a vendor in that it supplies labor for the car companies, but when was the last time the government forced a private company to sign long-term binding contracts for with a vendor in a highly competitive market? (There are 30 gumball manufacturers, but you can only buy them from this one guy.)

I freely admit that I may be missing something obvious... but it seems that the UAW is only a critical vendor in the sense that Chrysler, GM, etc. are legally prevented from using other "vendors."

[DADIODADDY]

What are the units of suckage in Metric and English? golf balls through meter or foot of garden hose at STP? and what is the unit of political douchebaggery

[Pixelkiller]

Back on track for a bit: Does anybody know how far it is from "junk that car" to "burn your bonds"?
Just asking.

[robc]

SugarFree,

The UAW isnt a vendor in that they arent providing the labor. A temp agency is a vendor. A company that supplies contractors is a vendor. Chrysler hires the employees who then join the union (if not already a member). If UAW hired and paid them and Chrysler paid UAW for the work, that would be different.

If that had been the case, the pension problems would be a UAW problem, not a car company problem. 🙂

[SugarFree]

If UAW hired and paid them and Chrysler paid UAW for the work, that would be different.

Ah, so that's the difference.

[Trouble]

shrike, again, you didn't address tulpa's point - the people who came out on top in the Chrysler debacle were neither unsecured creditors nor vendors of any sort.

The employees could be seen as vendors - since they are providers of services - but the UAW doesn't provide anything except, occasionally, the proverbial unsolicited finger in the anus.

I'll certainly think twice, or three times, before investing in IRBs ever again. Silly me, but I'm not comfortable trusting the US industrial base to a supercilious schmuck who sure as hell can read a speech, but has never operated so much as a popsicle stand.

[Russ 2000]

I worked through a few contract issues as a critical software ERP vendor. Companies can't operate without ERP.

As a programmer of ERP software, I laugh at this moronic assertion.

[Charles Jones]

There's only one wrong detail: After they get through squishing all those gas-guzzlers for scrap, they don't ship them to Pittsburgh, because the steel industry is long gone there.

[Whitehall]

I'm still amazed at Heinlein's prescience in "Red Planet" where he talked about the girls on Mars dyeing their hair multicolors.

When I was a kid that was soooo FUTURE!

[EscapedWestOfTheBigMuddy]

Scrooge,
As a physicist, I've got to say that mass and inertia are one-and-the-same in all the theories we use (these quantities are measured in kilograms or slugs---its only engineers who insist on the abomination of "pounds mass"), and neither depends on the local gravitational field.

Mass (or inertia) and weight are different things, and it is the traditional units that give my students trouble here because of the use of "pounds" for both (you use Newtons (dynes) for weight in SI (cgs)).

I agree, however, that it is harder to spot which units have not been converted when using SI. On the other hand, the conversion can be done in your head faster and easier.

And the preference for cgs vs. SI vs. "natural" vs. keV vs. MeV vs. GeV depends on the age and field of the physicist. Most of the introductory textbooks stick to SI these days.

[Don Meaker]

Why would I trade one tyrant a thousand miles away for a thousand tyrants one mile away?

[Curtis]

Number of the Beast~!

I support 'leveling' and Ford Aerospace of Australia! I read and enjoyed them all, except Job. That sucked. I thought the Moon is a Harsh Mistress was the best but he did produce a lot of 'best'. I read them all when I was the perfect age for them. young.

[Robert W. Franson]

Heinlein also has some incisive criticism of automobiles in The Rolling Stones -- a novel essentially about transportation, its means and ends.

[Alan Trust]

When I was working at a GM plant in 1917, precisely that sort of new-car crushing went down.

The UAW had been on strike and the srike straddled the model year change in the fall. Because the model-year changes included some safety and emissions changes, the 1971 cars on the line in process of being built could not be sold as 1972 cars, even though it was still the 1971 calendar year. So cars were built, driven off the line and across the street from the plant, and into a crusher. It was the fastest and cheapest way to empty the line for the slightly changed 1972 models.

We young, unsophisticated, fairly new employees watched this process in agony, thinking, "Hell, sell 'em to us as used cars! We won't tell!"

So GM wasted however many hundreds of millions of dollars over miniscule differences in definitions.

[Alan Trust]

The "1917" in the preceding message was of course meant to be "1971."

I watched similar wastage in a Keebler factory two years earlier, when daily about two tons of sugar cookies or other goodies were picked up by pig farmers, discarded because they constituted an overrun or the packaging was the wrong color cellophane.