In article ,
says...

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...
In article 9ee9f705-fe0b-44d8-8391-557d63d3bd40@
4g2000yqu.googlegroups.com, says...

I actually agree with you on Orion/EELV for LEO.

But I still loath this Musk-worship you find out there.The man's not
the Messiah when it comes to HSF, and he's looking way, way, ahead. At
least with this reusable Falcon 9 idea, he's putting up his own dinero-
maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.

The nice thing is that he's not the only one. Look at where the money
is coming from for Stratolaunch. This is what capitalism is all about.
NASA is unfortunately a government run socialistic enterprise when
they're developing their own launch vehicles.

Jeff
--
" Ares 1 is a prime example of the fact that NASA just can't get it
up anymore... and when they can, it doesn't stay up long. "
- tinker

I'm in favor of SLS/Orion and that doesn't need to be repeated further.

I'm not. It's reinventing the wheel and doesn't deal with the major
difficulty in space travel, which is launch costs, which will not be
reduced to a reasonable level until we quit throwing away the booster on
every launch. NASA should be working on that instead of yet another
stunt.

In
case you haven't noticed, NASA is beholden to Congress, and if Congress says
"Thou Shalt build a heavy-lift vehicle" and appropriates the necesary funds,
NASA has to do it. They can't pick and choose what parts of the law (such as
the 2010 Space Authorization Act) to follow.

And Congress told them to do that because NASA said that that was what
they wanted to do.

Stratolaunch will work with small payloads (it's been done with Pegasus
before), but larger ones...you need a conventional rocket for those.

Perhaps, perhaps not. If launch costs are low enough you can put a
facility on-orbit to assemble "larger ones" from smaller pieces.

Musk has admitted that he's only got 1% of the lobbying power that the big
boys (Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, ULA, Northrup-Grumman, etc. have). Trying to
convince Congresscritters that Commercial Cargo and Crew is a good way
forward has been a tough sell.

Why does he have to convince Congress of anything if he doesn't want
them to pay for it? If he's got a cheaper system, eventually the
public will demand that Congress quit wasting money on NASA's
throwaways.