In article ,
ess says...

On 17/01/2015 3:20 PM, William Mook wrote:
On Saturday, January 17, 2015 at 4:55:07 PM UTC+13, Sylvia Else
wrote:

You seem to have admitted that there's no working hardware,

I never said that at all.

so the basic R&D has not yet been completed.

Didn't say that either.

If you haven't launched it, then you haven't completed the basic R&D.

If you have launched it, it's scarcely credible that there's no footage.


This is the *exact* problem I have with Mook. He claims there is no R&D
left to do when a sensible engineer concludes, from the public evidence
at hand, that there is not yet functioning, production ready, hardware
to actually sell. But, at the same time, he hints that such hardware
does indeed exist; he's simply hiding said hardware behind the veil of
NDAs and proprietary knowledge.

A real picture is worth far more than a pretty computer rendering.
Anyone these days can render a pretty picture on a computer. For
example, the renderings of a "real starship" which came from one NASA
"scientist" in recent years that looked like they belonged in the next
Star Trek movie. No one in their right mind would mistake those "NASA"
renderings for anything "real".


Elon Musk uploaded video of the recent Falcon 9 first stage landing
attempt that some will look at and call a "spectacular failure". There
is no argument that the stage went "splat" on the deck of the barge, but
that is concrete *public* proof of just how close Musk is getting to
success. Engineers wroth their salt at ULA know just what this video
means to their future. Whether or not they can convince their
management and their corporation's top officials of this is
questionable.

This is the public facing difference between Musk from Mook. Musk isn't
afraid to post his progress in public. Mook is.


Another real world example is how Lockheed won the X-33 contract with
NASA. With a wink and a nod the assured NASA, and the media, that they
could build a conformal, multi-lobed, composite LH2 tank for their X-33
design. But, they also told everyone that they couldn't show any
previous hardware even though they hinted it existed (wink-wink, nod-
nod, know what I mean?). We all know how that ended with NASA's upper
management claiming that the technology for SSTO simply did not exist
yet. NASA very carefully came just short of openly calling Lockheed
liars with those public proclamations.


In reality, I suspect Mook would never let any of the "regular posters"
here sign an NDA and see any actual hardware for the following reasons.

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