On Monday, October 21, 2013 4:59:07 AM UTC-7, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,

says...

Neil deGrasse Tyson



I have mixed feelings about this guy. On one hand, he presents

information to the "mainstream" in an easy to understand fashion. On

the other hand, he often spouts views that seem unsupported, likely

because he's reluctant to delve too far into the details, lest he

"lose" his mainstream audience.



Also, he's an astrophysicist, so I often find his views on aerospace

engineering to be, at best, lacking. But the main "thrust" of this book

seems to be what motivated the space program in the '60's and what

should motivate it in the present and future.



I find it curious that you provided the old title to his book "Failure

to Launch: The Dreams and Delusions of Space Enthusiasts", when the book

title is actually: "Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier" by

Neil deGrasse Tyson.



I've not read the book, but from the reviews I've read, the first part

is a restating of "the space race" as we all know it. Fueled by the

Cold War, the Space Race, was nothing more than a *&^# waving contest

between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It was a contest, an alternative

to nuclear war, to "prove" which country (and ideology) was superior.

The Soviet Union was clearly in the lead, until the U.S. decided to put

a man on the moon with a "waste anything but time" mantra.



Oddly enough, the U.S. took a socialistic approach of a single program

led by few people at the very top. The Soviet Union had a few competing

camps in both the launch vehicle (missile) and spacecraft arenas. In

other words, a more "competitive" approach which was much closer to

capitalism than the U.S. approach. It's therefore somewhat ironic that

the U.S. claims that it "won" the Space Race by putting a man on the

moon in 1969.



Only now, with the budgetary necessity of the "commercial cargo" and

"commercial crew" initiatives is the U.S. starting to approach space

travel in a more capitalistic manner. Oddly enough, the budgetary

crisis is being caused by the gigantic, socialistic, congressionally

mandated, SLS/Orion program. SLS/Orion is so huge, from a budgetary

perspective, that there is little to no money for any actual payloads!

So, on one hand Congress mandates yet another huge, socialistic, mega-

program (SLS/Orion) with one set of winners picked by NASA, but the day

to day manned space program (ISS) is being run on a shoestring budget in

a capitalistic, competitive, manner.



The good news is that the "commercial" programs are showing much more

progress, with far less money spent, than the mega-project. Hopefully

this means that people will begin to realize that "the emperor has no

clothes".



So, goof-ball proposals like "unmanned asteroid retrieval" with

SLS/Orion visiting the asteroid only when it is brought back to the

earth/moon system are being floated by NASA. I personally think this is

the dumbest idea ever. Why use an *unmanned* mission to bring an

asteroid close to earth to study when SLS/Orion was intended to fly far

beyond LEO.



Very strange times, to say the least.



Jeff

--

"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would

magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper

than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in

and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

It's just another mainstream status-quo game that the oligarchs and Bilderbergs get to play in order to get the rest of us hooked on paying for everything multiple times over. The very last thing they really want is to see any private exploitation of our moon or Venus, although a little frozen to death planet of a relatively worthless Mars seems perfectly good to go after..