(Greg Kuperberg) writes:

A couple of months ago Wired Magazine quoted John Pike as saying,
"It costs $10,000 a pound to get into space, and the reason isn't the
government - it's physics." A lot of people here devoted many postings
to ridiculing this comment. Some were not content to refute the statement
and also questioned Pike's credentials, political ideology, and intellect.

John Pike has no qualifications to make this claim. Note that even on
his own, self promoting, web page, he makes no mention of any degrees
or any real experience that would qualify him to make such a claim.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/staff/pike.htm

Others on John Pike's staff
(http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/staff/index.html) hold degrees in:

1. Masters Degree (D.E.A.) in Political Studies
2. Bachelors Degree in International Studies (Masters Candidate Security
Policy Studies )
3. Bachelor of Arts degree
4. degree in International Service
5. Ph.D. in chemistry from Lehigh University in 1984 for the study of
tissue lytic proteins produced by the human pathogen Vibrio
vulnificus, a microorganism responsible for a type of "flesh-eating"
disease in those with compromised immune systems
6. Associate of Applied Science degree in Mechanical Engineering
Technology
7. Masters Degree in History

None of these people has a background that would qualify them to make
the statement that Pike made.

The comment was an off-the-cuff exaggeration, but one interpretation
of it is true enough.

I don't think so. There was nothing in the statement that indicated
that he was exaggerating.

The flip side of this is that many of the CATS/RLV/X-Prize believers
don't seem to take the laws of physics very seriously. For example,
another Wired article quotes Gary Hudson as follows: "That leaves the most
frequently asked question about the Roton: wouldn't the rotor blades burn
off in the atmosphere? The remarkable - and counterintuitive - answer
is No." Given what happened to the space shuttle Columbia,
that is a fair question. Just calling the answer counterintuitive and
remarkable doesn't make it right.

Anyone with any qualifications would know that what Gary said is true.
Roton would have been mostly empty tankage. As such, the heating it
experiences on re-entry would be much less than the much more dense
shuttle (which drops its large, empty tank before reaching orbit).
Roton would do much of its decelleration very high in the atmosphere
where the dynamic pressure is low. The shuttle, being very dense,
simply can't. It's apples and oranges to anyone who understands a bit
of the physics (something that Pike clearly does not understand).

Jeff
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