CEV to be made commercially available

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.

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 07:55:21 -0500, Monte Davis wrote
(in article ):

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.

That's exactly the implication he wants to leave - an implication he is
never able to substantiate and why I finally killfiled him.

--
"Fame may be fleeting but obscurity is forever." ~Anonymous
"I believe as little as possible and know as much as I can."
~Todd Stuart Phillips
www.angryherb.net

"Monte Davis" wrote in message
...
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.

Facts not in evidence. *Let him produce those answers*, or he's nothing more
than a Stuffie or Bbo Hallre.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On
Sun, 23 Oct 2005 12:55:21 GMT, in a place far, far away, Monte Davis
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

(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.

They imply nothing of the kind.

strawman portion snipped

Would it kill you to acknowledge that reusability is in fact a hard
technical challenge?

Without quantifying "hard," it's hard to have a firm opinion on that
subject.

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?

It wouldn't "kill" me to acknowledge something with which I don't
agree (again, depending on the quantification of "very hard")--I'm
made of tougher stuff than that--but I'm understandably not in the
habit of doing it. Nor, I suspect, are you.

On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 17:51:34 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote, in part:

Of course there are.

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

Reusability involves weight and cost penalties.

Flying a lot creates a chicken-and-egg problem.

But I do see on the Astronautix site the sad story of one attempt that
could well have been successful.

If you can't fly a lot, just build your rocket out of a lot of identical
units!

Despite clearly not being optimal in terms of overhead mass, OTRAG
apparently already demonstrated how one can significantly reduce the
costs of launching rockets into space.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
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"John Savard" wrote in message
...

If you can't fly a lot, just build your rocket out of a lot of identical
units!

Or at least use the same system of units throughout - that helps too

In article ,
lid (John Savard) wrote:

But I do see on the Astronautix site the sad story of one attempt that
could well have been successful.

If you can't fly a lot, just build your rocket out of a lot of identical
units!

Despite clearly not being optimal in terms of overhead mass, OTRAG
apparently already demonstrated how one can significantly reduce the
costs of launching rockets into space.

That is a sad story, but perhaps it's not over:

"As of 2005, Kayser was actively searching for partners to fund an
OTRAG-type production facility in the United States and to apply his
unique low-cost technology to the requirements of the future American
space program. He founded von Braun Debus Kayser Rocket Science LLC to
transfer OTRAG's intellectual property and know-how to the United
States. Kayser, along with newer private entrepreneurs such as Musk,
Rutan, and Bezos, still dreams of achieving the goal of affordable space
transport below $ 1,000 per pound into orbit."
[http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/otrag.htm]

One can hope...
- Joe

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lid (John Savard) wrote:

OTRAG apparently already demonstrated how one can significantly
reduce the costs of launching rockets into space.

OTRAG never flew - thus they demonstrated nothing except viewgraphs.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL