Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2010 1:01 am
GIThruster: I admire and appreciate your restraint for not ranting. Thank you.
That which makes you groan and wish to spew a thirty-page rant is why I haven't been working for space access for the last ten years. All (okay, maybe most of them) of the good ideas have been thought, studied, debated, conceptualized and roughly costed and where has it gotten us? NASA Constellation/Orion (or whatever they call it - I truly don't care), space shuttle retirement (a good thing in some respects), Back to the Moon, etc.
I sincerely hope Falcons, Blue Origins, Space Ship Twos and all of the entrepreneurs do very well, indeed. I hope the money is good enough that the more speculative ideas can be developed and built. But you started this thread, and I tried to be optimistic along with you.
We wrote together throught the nay-sayers of human spaceflight, largely ignoring them to our mutual benefit. Now we reach an impasse, I've finally told you what I really think and you want to groan. You wanted a notional design for a Titan stay and return mission, I gave you mine. You gave me yours.
Now, we have to do the next most irritating thing in the world; wait for developments:
1. Will the space entrepreneurs succeed well enough to satisfy your first condition in the first post in the thread?
2. Do polywells work? Can we use that power for space applications?
3. Will the space entrepreneurs do better than we expect? FWIW, I'm suspecting Burt Rutan will develop Spaceship Three as a Black Horse variant for TSTO and who knows what after?
[end of rant]
I'm sorry. I am by nature an introvert and run out of things to say until I receive more input. I'll find a more optimistic end quotation for you.
That which makes you groan and wish to spew a thirty-page rant is why I haven't been working for space access for the last ten years. All (okay, maybe most of them) of the good ideas have been thought, studied, debated, conceptualized and roughly costed and where has it gotten us? NASA Constellation/Orion (or whatever they call it - I truly don't care), space shuttle retirement (a good thing in some respects), Back to the Moon, etc.
I sincerely hope Falcons, Blue Origins, Space Ship Twos and all of the entrepreneurs do very well, indeed. I hope the money is good enough that the more speculative ideas can be developed and built. But you started this thread, and I tried to be optimistic along with you.
We wrote together throught the nay-sayers of human spaceflight, largely ignoring them to our mutual benefit. Now we reach an impasse, I've finally told you what I really think and you want to groan. You wanted a notional design for a Titan stay and return mission, I gave you mine. You gave me yours.
Now, we have to do the next most irritating thing in the world; wait for developments:
1. Will the space entrepreneurs succeed well enough to satisfy your first condition in the first post in the thread?
2. Do polywells work? Can we use that power for space applications?
3. Will the space entrepreneurs do better than we expect? FWIW, I'm suspecting Burt Rutan will develop Spaceship Three as a Black Horse variant for TSTO and who knows what after?
[end of rant]
I'm sorry. I am by nature an introvert and run out of things to say until I receive more input. I'll find a more optimistic end quotation for you.