Rand Simberg wrote:

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 11:55:30 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Terrell
Miller" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

anyone with a lick of engineering knowledge has long since come to teh
conclusion that SPS doesn't work, Rand. Why do you find that so hard to
accept?

Because it's not true. That's the opinion of many, but not all.

Ah me. Another thread where I have some sympathy with the basic argument,
when it is whether or not SPS is both doable and going further down the line

economic. The problem is that making claims such as "anyone with a lick of
engineering knowledge has come to the conclusion that SPS doesn't work is
demonstratably false".

However, that is not the same as the claim that the SPS works. I claim
that is unproven. There is a lack of experimental data to prove this
particular thesis. I note that the claim SPS works definitely has to
be qualified. It depends on some state of the art advancements in
things like solar collectors and building large satellite systems that have
just not been done yet.

So now you have to assume some magic booster gets

No magic. Just intelligently designed.

so you're saying that all the current booster designs are...not
intelligently designed?

Yes. Not when it comes to low cost.

Now we can get to the matter of what qualifies as intelligently
designed.

This part of the conversation where the arguments get a bit
squishy. You can make a case for saying that we don't have
low cost launchers because we don't have large projects
requiring the launch of large masses of material into orbit.

Then you can claim that we don't have the large projects
because there are no suitable low cost launchers available.

Mike Walsh