"Terrell Miller" wrote in message ...


Perhaps the goals stated during the ill-fated
X-33/VentureStar program were overly ambitious (reducing launch costs
by a factor of 10), but it seems to me that we should certainly be
able to do better than what's currently being proposed.

and your specific plan for doing better would be...what?

I would like to see the funding that Bush wants to use for the "CEV"
instead go toward developing a fully reusable launch vehicle. I think
that if a conservative approach is taken, using advanced but proven
technologies and most likely requiring a two-stage design, such a
vehicle could be developed for less than the cost of Bush's plan for
"Apollo II".


I'd love to see humans return to the moon and eventually travel to
Mars and beyond. But the first step we need to take is to develop a
safer, more cost effective means of reaching orbit.

been trying to do that for a very long time now in a wide variety of guises.
None of them worked out. Time to move on.

We've had the space shuttle, which was shaped largely by underfunding
and resulting design compromises, and by military interference. It
was sold on false promises, but nonetheless was a technological
success in that it proved the concept of a reusable space plane and
provided unmatched capabilities. It should be viewed as just one step
along the path of RLV development. Any subsequent RLV programs have
been half assed attempts with no real commmitment.

You say time to move on. I agree. It's time to move on to the next
generation of RLV's, not move back to throw-away rockets and ballistic
entry capsules!


On-orbit assembly
of lunar or interplanetary craft will become much easier once we have
a "VentureStar" type vehicle capable of sustaining high flight rates.

the lesson that Columbia was *supposed* to have taught us is that there's no
such thing as a sustainable high launch rate for reusable spacecraft.


No, it just reinforced what we already knew - that the space shuttle
would never be able to deliver on its original promise. That doesn't
mean that no vehicle ever could.


then why did Concorde never earn out? Simple: because it was much more
difficult to operate than the initial projections (sound familiar?), and
thus the airfare was so outrageously high that very few people found it
useful. And then the market for international travel (let alone *fast*
international travel) dried up after 9/11. There's no market anymore for
SST. Hell, there's hardly a market for anything fancier than a 767 these
days.

I don't believe that there's no market. I think that companies just
aren't willing to invest enough in new technologies. In today's risk
averse environment, concern over short term profits is retarding
technological advancement.

I will agree that there's hardly a market for a fuel guzzling
environmental menace like the Concorde, but surely we should be able
to expect technological advancements by now that can take us beyond
the Mach 0.85 range economically.


but our automotive infrastructure is IIRC more advanced and widespread than
anyone else's. The Japanese didn't build high-speed trains because they're
neat, they built them because they don't have room for any more freeways.
Same thing for Europe.


I think that's a fallacy. Germany certainly has both an excellent
highway system and an excellent rail network.


Again: why do we need that? You can fly all the way across country in just
over four hours, and there are plenty of seats available on commercial
airliners. Except for a few bottlenecked megalopoli, we don't *need*
high-speed rail and won't for quite some time.

http://www.trainweb.org/hsr/

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...300439& itm=1