h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..
That's Fox News' title for my column. I just called it "Daring."

The third in a trilogy, and I think that I'm overwraught, or at least
overWrighted...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,106062,00.html

No mas.

I especially liked this paragraph:
"... A long, drawn-out program, with many incremental tests, offers
many opportunities for test failures with their attendant bad
publicity and potential for embarrassing congressional hearings.
Moreover, the risk of such failures is increased if there is
inadequate analysis before committing to hardware--hardware made all
the more expensive by attempting to minimize the risk of failure, thus
making any possible failure more expensive as well."

I notice that some of the same people who claim to agree with this
analysis when it applies to spaceflight like to throw it out the
window when talking about any military test program like the
"excessively crash prone" V-22 Osprey, or the "expensive and
unnecessary" X-50 Canard Rotor Wing. Apparently, permission to fail
during testing of a new vehicle only exists for entrepeneurs testing
rockets and fixed wing craft.

Tom Merkle