CEV to be made commercially available

Breaking news...

http://www.starshipmodeler.net/cgi-b...ic.php?t=31504


--
"The only thing that galls me about someone burning the American flag is how unoriginal it is. I mean if you're going to pull the Freedom-of-speech card, don't be a hack, come up with something interesting. Fashion Old Glory into a wisecracking puppet and blister the system with a scathing ventriloquism act, or better yet, drape the flag over your head and desecrate it with a large caliber bullet hole." Dennis Miller

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 04:26:11 GMT, Scott Lowther
wrote, in part:

Breaking news...

http://www.starshipmodeler.net/cgi-b...ic.php?t=31504

LOL!

Now, if only your subject line were literally true... and there were
private companies that had a rational reason to have personnel flown to
the Moon, or even to experience springtime on Mars...

I suppose we shall have to content ourselves with what the song suggests
that might mean in other words...

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
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On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 12:07:57 GMT, in a place far, far away,
lid (John Savard) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 04:26:11 GMT, Scott Lowther
wrote, in part:

Breaking news...

http://www.starshipmodeler.net/cgi-b...ic.php?t=31504

LOL!

Now, if only your subject line were literally true... and there were
private companies that had a rational reason to have personnel flown to
the Moon

There are many companies with rational reasons to have personnel flown
to the moon. What's lacking are companies that would be willing to do
it as expensively as the use of a CEV would require.

What's lacking are companies that would be willing to do it as expensively as the use of a CEV would require.

Then increase the flight rate. No such thing as a manned spacecraft
that'll be "cheap" if only flown a few times a year.

On 17 Oct 2005 11:26:57 -0700, in a place far, far away,
" made the
phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

What's lacking are companies that would be willing to do it as expensively as the use of a CEV would require.

Then increase the flight rate. No such thing as a manned spacecraft
that'll be "cheap" if only flown a few times a year.

And there's no way that CEV will be cheap even if flown a thousand
times a year, if it flies on top of an expendable.

And there's no way that CEV will be cheap even if flown a thousand
times a year, if it flies on top of an expendable.

Agreed. That's why you should fly it on the Stick rather than the
EELVs. EELVs are fully expendable. Stick is fully reusable.

On Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:55:27 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote, in part:

There are many companies with rational reasons to have personnel flown
to the moon. What's lacking are companies that would be willing to do
it as expensively as the use of a CEV would require.

That's quite correct. It is absolutely true, every word of it.

However: just as Shenzou VI would not be out of the Earth's gravity if
it had a slightly higher orbit...

are you claiming that there are ways, absent the development of
far-future technologies such as a space elevator (or non-Newtonian
propulsion!), to send personnel to the moon at prices that would be
rational for even a *few* private companies to take advantage of?

Of course, looking at prices in my local department store... if it
weren't for the effects of the balance of payments deficit, perhaps the
U.S. could just buy Shenzou rockets from China!

Or, given NAFTA... Hecho en Mexico, anyone?

On the other hand, I think that it is possible to launch *small* rockets
quite inexpensively. On the Astronautix site, for example, the low cost
of the German V-2 is cited.

What with all the advances in microelectronics and medical science,
perhaps in a few decades people will be able to "upload" themselves into
a matchbox-sized mass of electronics. We could call it the Henry
Wadsworth Akeley method of space travel.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
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On Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:13:39 GMT, in a place far, far away,
lid (John Savard) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

On Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:55:27 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote, in part:

There are many companies with rational reasons to have personnel flown
to the moon. What's lacking are companies that would be willing to do
it as expensively as the use of a CEV would require.

That's quite correct. It is absolutely true, every word of it.

However: just as Shenzou VI would not be out of the Earth's gravity if
it had a slightly higher orbit...

are you claiming that there are ways, absent the development of
far-future technologies such as a space elevator (or non-Newtonian
propulsion!), to send personnel to the moon at prices that would be
rational for even a *few* private companies to take advantage of?

Of course there are.

Don't throw the hardware away, and fly a lot.

Rand Simberg wrote:
On Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:13:39 GMT, in a place far, far away,
lid (John Savard) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

On Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:55:27 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote, in part:

There are many companies with rational reasons to have personnel flown
to the moon. What's lacking are companies that would be willing to do
it as expensively as the use of a CEV would require.

That's quite correct. It is absolutely true, every word of it.

However: just as Shenzou VI would not be out of the Earth's gravity if
it had a slightly higher orbit...

are you claiming that there are ways, absent the development of
far-future technologies such as a space elevator (or non-Newtonian
propulsion!), to send personnel to the moon at prices that would be
rational for even a *few* private companies to take advantage of?

Of course there are.

Don't throw the hardware away, and fly a lot.

oh yeah...and don't hold your breath. you'll pass out well before the
private sector launches anything to the moon, unless you've got a cool
billion in your pocket--and/or a congressman, as even some alt.spacers
are starting to go for.

tom

h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

Of course there are.

Don't throw the hardware away, and fly a lot.

Rand, you say in another thread that you've never claimed to be
smarter than those you post to, which is quite true. What you do is to
keep posting these glib throw-away lines, which imply quite strongly
that the dumb bunnies at NASA have never given a thought to the
benefis of reusability and high flight rates.

You know perfectly well that that's not true. You know perfectly well
that reusability and high flight rates *were* the case advanced for
STS development, just as they have been the case advanced for any
number of proposals (and half-begun hardware developments) since.

In more extended contexts, on your weblog and the New Atlantis
article, you acknowledge that -- but there the implication is that
nobody who's gone for reusability and high flight rates has done it
*right.*

Would it kill you to acknowledge that reusability is in fact a hard
technical challenge? Would it kill you to acknowledge that while high
flight rates would lower costs, it's going to to be very hard to *get*
to those rates from where we are now, because we're not even close to
price/demand elasticity?

Because as long as you continue to tap-dance around those two facts,
it's hard to escape the implication that Rand Simberg knows some nifty
answers he has yet to share with us idiots out here.