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#221
March 9th 05, 06:27 PM
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#222
March 9th 05, 06:43 PM
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#224
March 9th 05, 09:33 PM
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On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 18:27:09 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Eric Chomko) made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: : What incentive does private industry have to build a next generation : launch vehicle? : For profit. And right now the only profit in space other than comm sats is from public funds. Well, since the future (when this will be happening) isn't right now, your comment (like almost all of your comments) is pointless.
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#225
March 10th 05, 03:25 PM
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"Eric Chomko" wrote in message ... Jeff Findley ) wrote: : Eric seems to have missed this. It is my hope that a properly designed : (reusable) commercial launch vehicle could reduce launch costs by at least : two orders of magnitude. No I haven't missed it! If space is so profitable, then where is the private industry? Bigelow's hotel and the whole space tourism looks good on paper but I don't see venture capitalists flocking to throw cash your way. Partly because investors will need to be convinced that such cost reductions really are possible. The "conventional wisdom" is that only government sponsored agencies (i.e. US, Russia, and China) have the resources to put people into space, so you've got to convince investors that this isn't the case. SpaceShip One went a small way towards this goal, but there were still many people who said it wasn't a "real" spaceship since it was suborbital. The other thing you've got to fight is that this will be a very long term investment. Most investors today want to show returns on their investments in days, months, or a few quarters. Lowering the cost of access to LEO won't happen in that short timeframe. Two orders of magnitude? So instead of folks like Tito paying $20,000,000 for a space vacation others can pay $200,000? I guess that is Branson's dream. Exactly. $200k is starting to come down to a price that someone in the upper middle class could afford for a "once in a lifetime experience". Note that this is essentially what Virgin Galactic is planning on initially charging for suborbital flights. If Virgin can make money in the suborbital market at this price, the orbital market will be even larger at the same price. I think that Virgin Galactic will need to show investors that there is money in suborbital tourism before they'll start pouring "real money" into companies working on orbital vehicles. : If this is indeed the case, any company with such : a vehicle could gobble up much of the existing launch market in short order. : Furthermore, such a reduction in costs would certainly open up new markets : as well (including orbital tourism). I'm sure NASA and other agencies would love to reduce lauch costs. Hell launches as a COTS product is definitely a goal. Parts of NASA may want this, but other parts would like to see a shuttle derived vehicle replace the shuttle, so that they can keep as many jobs at KSC as possible. A truly reusable vehicle that lowers lauch costs by two orders of magnitude simply won't need a standing army the size the shuttle does (it can't, or it won't be that cheap). So a really cheap launch vehicle will "hurt" NASA by forcing the layoffs of much of the shuttle workforce (i.e the standing army). : The only losers in such a scenario are the existing launch providers who : will loose billions of dollars in revenues due to the lost business. With Yes, just like IBM lost billions due to the small computer market. Hurt um so bad that they don't even exist anymore. Opps... They still exist, but they don't make money on mainframes anymore, do they? They had to evolve or die. They chose to evolve. The big aerospace companies getting billions in revenue through their expendable launch vehicles will have to do the same. : Eric's proposal, the DOD program to build a new "space plane" would go to : those very companies who stand to loose the most from cheaper access to : space. No doubt they would run such a program much like Delta IV and Atlas : V, with similar "reductions" in launch costs. Do you honestly think that NASA and other governemnt agencies wouldn't want to use your cheaper access to space? That they somehow like paying more for launches? As I said earlier, parts of NASA doesn't want costs to go down. You can't reduce costs without reducing the size of the standing army and that means job custs. Government agencies are notorious for fighing cuts that reduce their workforce. This is one reason that seemingly crazy ideas like an SRB derived launch vehicle are seen coming out of NASA. Keeping the SRB alive means not only keeping the jobs of the people who work on the SRB, but it also means keeping the VAB open, the crawlers operational, and the shuttle pads operational. This means that an SRB launch vehicle *can't* be much cheaper than the shuttle, because you're keeping much of the shuttle's infrastructure and standing army around to make it happen. This standing army and infrastructure is one big reason that the shuttle isn't really cheaper to operate than the Saturn V. Note that it uses much of the same (albeit modified) infrastructure. Even worse, much of the office space in the VAB had to be vacated due to the solids (and hypergolics?) of the shuttle. Entire new buildings had to be built to replace this essentially lost office space. Geez, I'm the one accused of being a conspiracy monger and here you are convinced that the current group of government contractors in space are keeping small companies out just to keep the price of launches high. Is that what you believe? Actually this has happened. When investors go to ask NASA people if a startup's ideas are any good, what do you think they say? Certainly it depends on who in NASA they ask, but the conventional wisdom at NASA is that spaceflight is necessarily expensive. The startups are going against this wisdom and are in many ways trying to compete with NASA. I have news for you, if you had something then they'd use it. Further, if you had something, you'd be showing it. Since nothing exists, all you have is shaking fists and whines. Many startups do not seek or accept government funding. You should find out why this is true before you start saying I'm making up conspiracies. I think that keeping SpaceShip One secret until it was almost completely developed was a very smart move. The only way they were able to do this was because they had an investor with deep pockets. Once you start seeking out funding from many sources, your plans start to become very public and open to scrutiny from those that have a vested interest in the failure of those plans. People will do a lot to protect their phoney baloney jobs, just watch Blazing Saddles. ;-) Jeff -- Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.
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#226
March 10th 05, 03:29 PM
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"Eric Chomko" wrote in message ... ANd you have no idea when the future will be. Commercial space, like nanotechnology, doesn't exist right now other than on paper (i.e. no one is truing a single dollar on it). Tell that to the Russians. They've made quite a bit of money selling seats on Soyuz to governments as well as individuals. Jeff -- Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.
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#227
March 10th 05, 06:28 PM
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Jeff Findley ) wrote:
: "Eric Chomko" wrote in message : ... : Jeff Findley ) wrote: : : : Eric seems to have missed this. It is my hope that a properly designed : : (reusable) commercial launch vehicle could reduce launch costs by at : least : : two orders of magnitude. : : No I haven't missed it! If space is so profitable, then where is the : private industry? Bigelow's hotel and the whole space tourism looks good : on paper but I don't see venture capitalists flocking to throw cash your : way. : Partly because investors will need to be convinced that such cost reductions : really are possible. The "conventional wisdom" is that only government : sponsored agencies (i.e. US, Russia, and China) have the resources to put : people into space, so you've got to convince investors that this isn't the : case. SpaceShip One went a small way towards this goal, but there were : still many people who said it wasn't a "real" spaceship since it was : suborbital. Not just that, the term "stunt" was bandied about and I liken SS1 to Craig Breedlove and his jetcar runs. Cool stuff but they never spawned an industry. : The other thing you've got to fight is that this will be a very long term : investment. Most investors today want to show returns on their investments : in days, months, or a few quarters. Lowering the cost of access to LEO : won't happen in that short timeframe. I agree, but hopefully something will eventually come out of it. : Two orders of magnitude? So instead of folks like Tito paying $20,000,000 : for a space vacation others can pay $200,000? I guess that is Branson's : dream. : Exactly. $200k is starting to come down to a price that someone in the : upper middle class could afford for a "once in a lifetime experience". Note : that this is essentially what Virgin Galactic is planning on initially : charging for suborbital flights. If Virgin can make money in the suborbital : market at this price, the orbital market will be even larger at the same : price. : I think that Virgin Galactic will need to show investors that there is money : in suborbital tourism before they'll start pouring "real money" into : companies working on orbital vehicles. No doubt. But wouldn't an existing infrastructure make space tourism more viable? For example, I have no desire to go into space per se, but I sure as heck would love to visit Tranquility Base on the Moon and see the remains of the LEM, Armstrong and Aldrin's footsteps preserved under plexiglass and the US flag sticking out of the lunar surface. Now THAT would be cool! : : If this is indeed the case, any company with such : : a vehicle could gobble up much of the existing launch market in short : order. : : Furthermore, such a reduction in costs would certainly open up new : markets : : as well (including orbital tourism). : : I'm sure NASA and other agencies would love to reduce lauch costs. Hell : launches as a COTS product is definitely a goal. : Parts of NASA may want this, but other parts would like to see a shuttle : derived vehicle replace the shuttle, so that they can keep as many jobs at : KSC as possible. Space as an industry isn't going to shrink. NASA may want to keep employees at KSC but they can't expect it. : A truly reusable vehicle that lowers lauch costs by two : orders of magnitude simply won't need a standing army the size the shuttle : does (it can't, or it won't be that cheap). So a really cheap launch : vehicle will "hurt" NASA by forcing the layoffs of much of the shuttle : workforce (i.e the standing army). Not necessarily. NASA is going to get their $15-$16 billion a year. If launch costs go down, then NASA will simply need to create new work via more proposals to expand cheaper launch costs into new endeavors. NASA and the government in general should never strive to stifle progress in order to preserve employment. It is the same argument about robots replcaing human workers. Make the replaced humans manage the robots in order to increase productivity. : : The only losers in such a scenario are the existing launch providers who : : will loose billions of dollars in revenues due to the lost business. : With : : Yes, just like IBM lost billions due to the small computer market. Hurt um : so bad that they don't even exist anymore. Opps... : They still exist, but they don't make money on mainframes anymore, do they? False! Initially, IBM made a bundle on the PC and eventually the clone market drove them out of the PC market. IBM came BACK to mainframes and other computers (midsize and large servers) too expensive for the average user and as a result sales and revenue are back up. : They had to evolve or die. They chose to evolve. The big aerospace : companies getting billions in revenue through their expendable launch : vehicles will have to do the same. But it will take small companies in the space industry to make the PC-version of a launch vehicle to get anyone's attention. Who is the Apple Computer company in the space industry? Where are the Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniaks of the cheap access to space? You? Well whoever it is they stand to make a bundle. And whining about NASA, L-Mart, Boeing, etc. ain't going to do squat! Like the message in the movie "Field of Dreams", 'build it and they will come', makes a helova lot of sense WRT to CATS. Perhaps a few ticked off L-Mart employees or Boeing employees who's cheaper designs are being ignored will spin off and create a new company. Think Zilog and Intel, Z-80 vs. 8080. : : Eric's proposal, the DOD program to build a new "space plane" would go : to : : those very companies who stand to loose the most from cheaper access to : : space. No doubt they would run such a program much like Delta IV and : Atlas : : V, with similar "reductions" in launch costs. : : Do you honestly think that NASA and other governemnt agencies wouldn't : want to use your cheaper access to space? That they somehow like paying : more for launches? : As I said earlier, parts of NASA doesn't want costs to go down. You can't : reduce costs without reducing the size of the standing army and that means : job custs. Government agencies are notorious for fighing cuts that reduce : their workforce. And like I said before, YOU'RE WRONG! You're providing an excuse. Excuses don't cut it! You make a true CATS vehicle and it will get noticed! : This is one reason that seemingly crazy ideas like an SRB derived launch : vehicle are seen coming out of NASA. Keeping the SRB alive means not only : keeping the jobs of the people who work on the SRB, but it also means : keeping the VAB open, the crawlers operational, and the shuttle pads : operational. This means that an SRB launch vehicle *can't* be much cheaper : than the shuttle, because you're keeping much of the shuttle's : infrastructure and standing army around to make it happen. Right now the shuttle is the only game in town other than the Russians and Chinese, and they only once. The gap between SS1 and the shuttle needs to be closed to some degree in order for your standing army to disapear. : This standing army and infrastructure is one big reason that the shuttle : isn't really cheaper to operate than the Saturn V. Note that it uses much : of the same (albeit modified) infrastructure. Even worse, much of the : office space in the VAB had to be vacated due to the solids (and : hypergolics?) of the shuttle. Entire new buildings had to be built to : replace this essentially lost office space. I can't help thinking about comparing a row boat to an aircraft carrier. THAT is the same as SS1 and the shuttle. What exactly do you want? : Geez, I'm the one accused of being a conspiracy monger and here you are : convinced that the current group of government contractors in space are : keeping small companies out just to keep the price of launches high. Is : that what you believe? : Actually this has happened. When investors go to ask NASA people if a : startup's ideas are any good, what do you think they say? Certainly it : depends on who in NASA they ask, but the conventional wisdom at NASA is that : spaceflight is necessarily expensive. The startups are going against this : wisdom and are in many ways trying to compete with NASA. Yep and at one time the conventional wisdom about computers was that all that were needed was 5! And that was from Thomas Watson of IBM!! : I have news for you, if you had something then they'd use it. Further, if : you had something, you'd be showing it. Since nothing exists, all you : have is shaking fists and whines. : Many startups do not seek or accept government funding. You should find out : why this is true before you start saying I'm making up conspiracies. Well I'm sure that Jobs and Wozniak were happy to sell their Apple IIs to anyone that was willing to buy them. : I think that keeping SpaceShip One secret until it was almost completely : developed was a very smart move. The only way they were able to do this was : because they had an investor with deep pockets. Once you start seeking out : funding from many sources, your plans start to become very public and open : to scrutiny from those that have a vested interest in the failure of those : plans. That tends to be the way of many a lot of things. The more that is publicly known the more likely of failure. : People will do a lot to protect their phoney baloney jobs, just watch : Blazing Saddles. ;-) I might agree with you regarding the oil industry. Could you imagine free energy and what that would do to the oil indsutrialists? Hell they wouldn't be rich anymore as their source of income would literally disappear. Eric : Jeff : -- : Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.
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#228
March 10th 05, 06:31 PM
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Jeff Findley ) wrote:
: "Eric Chomko" wrote in message : ... : ANd you have no idea when the future will be. Commercial space, like : nanotechnology, doesn't exist right now other than on paper (i.e. no one : is truing a single dollar on it). : Tell that to the Russians. They've made quite a bit of money selling seats : on Soyuz to governments as well as individuals. What is "quite a bit"? I think is is sort of tacky myself. Capitalism of the lowest form akin to drug dealing, gambling and prostitution. It's one thing as a commercial enterprise (like Las Vegas, Holland, etc.), but for a government to do that? Eric : Jeff : -- : Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.
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#229
March 10th 05, 07:27 PM
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#230
March 11th 05, 02:40 PM
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"Eric Chomko" wrote in message ... Jeff Findley ) wrote: : Exactly. $200k is starting to come down to a price that someone in the : upper middle class could afford for a "once in a lifetime experience". Note : that this is essentially what Virgin Galactic is planning on initially : charging for suborbital flights. If Virgin can make money in the suborbital : market at this price, the orbital market will be even larger at the same : price. : I think that Virgin Galactic will need to show investors that there is money : in suborbital tourism before they'll start pouring "real money" into : companies working on orbital vehicles. No doubt. But wouldn't an existing infrastructure make space tourism more viable? For example, I have no desire to go into space per se, but I sure as heck would love to visit Tranquility Base on the Moon and see the remains of the LEM, Armstrong and Aldrin's footsteps preserved under plexiglass and the US flag sticking out of the lunar surface. Now THAT would be cool! We've got a classic "chicken and egg" problem here. You keep saying that if you build a vehicle with lower launch costs that the customers will switch to your vehicle because it's cheaper. Unfortunately, ignoring other potential roadblocks to investors, investors are very hesitant to pour billions of dollars to develop CATS without a large existing market for the product. We have to show investors through many baby steps that as launch costs drop, the demand goes up. We also have to show investors that the US goverment won't hamper efforts of the manned, reusable launch vehicle industry. Given the history of the changing regulations over the years, this issue still isn't completely resolved. : I'm sure NASA and other agencies would love to reduce lauch costs. Hell : launches as a COTS product is definitely a goal. : Parts of NASA may want this, but other parts would like to see a shuttle : derived vehicle replace the shuttle, so that they can keep as many jobs at : KSC as possible. Space as an industry isn't going to shrink. NASA may want to keep employees at KSC but they can't expect it. NASA doesn't set its own budget. If launch costs drop, who's to say that Congress and teh administration won't decide that NASA can "do more with less"? Shrinking launch costs *are* a threat to the infrastructure and jobs at KSC. If you think that buracracies don't fight change when that change will reduce the size of the buracracy, you're the one that's crazy. Take a look at NASA Watch sometime. Many of the NASA centers are afraid that NASA jobs will disappear and that perhaps a NASA center may eventually close as its role diminishes due to funding cuts. Some of the objections to these cuts may be legitamate, but a lot of it is just a knee jerk reaction to the threats of the funding cuts themselves. : A truly reusable vehicle that lowers lauch costs by two : orders of magnitude simply won't need a standing army the size the shuttle : does (it can't, or it won't be that cheap). So a really cheap launch : vehicle will "hurt" NASA by forcing the layoffs of much of the shuttle : workforce (i.e the standing army). Not necessarily. NASA is going to get their $15-$16 billion a year. This is *not* a given. In this day and age of growing defecits, problems with social security, and US involvement in wars overseas, something's got to give. Note that one of the reasons that NASA's funding dropped quite a bit in the late 60's (even before the first moon landing) was our involvement in Vietnam and the high cost of that war. History is completely against your assertion. : Yes, just like IBM lost billions due to the small computer market. Hurt um : so bad that they don't even exist anymore. Opps... : They still exist, but they don't make money on mainframes anymore, do they? False! Initially, IBM made a bundle on the PC and eventually the clone market drove them out of the PC market. IBM came BACK to mainframes and other computers (midsize and large servers) too expensive for the average user and as a result sales and revenue are back up. It's arguable that today's servers bear little resemblance to yesterday's inflexible mainframes, but I'll concede the point. IBM moved away from big computers in favor of smaller ones in the 80's and 90's. But they evolved again and moved back to bigger computers. The key point is that they changed with the times. How succesful you are at changing with the times has a lot to do with whether you're leading the change or following it. The big aerospace companies are following the change when it comes to lower launch costs. In terms of launch costs, SS1 shows that you can create a manned suborbital vehicle with far lower launch costs than one would think. This didn't come from one of the "usual suspects". It was Scaled Composites first entry into the manned space arena. : They had to evolve or die. They chose to evolve. The big aerospace : companies getting billions in revenue through their expendable launch : vehicles will have to do the same. But it will take small companies in the space industry to make the PC-version of a launch vehicle to get anyone's attention. Who is the Apple Computer company in the space industry? Where are the Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniaks of the cheap access to space? You? Scaled Composites and the other startups have as their leaders the industry's equivalents of the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. These companies (and the people who lead them) have the potential to revolutionize the industry. Well whoever it is they stand to make a bundle. And whining about NASA, L-Mart, Boeing, etc. ain't going to do squat! Like the message in the movie "Field of Dreams", 'build it and they will come', makes a helova lot of sense WRT to CATS. Ignoring the issue is a recipe for failure. There have been many, many launch vehicle startups over the decades that have failed. It may interest you to find out why they failed and how those failures relate to the anove mentioned organizations. : Do you honestly think that NASA and other governemnt agencies wouldn't : want to use your cheaper access to space? That they somehow like paying : more for launches? : As I said earlier, parts of NASA doesn't want costs to go down. You can't : reduce costs without reducing the size of the standing army and that means : job custs. Government agencies are notorious for fighing cuts that reduce : their workforce. And like I said before, YOU'RE WRONG! You're providing an excuse. Excuses don't cut it! You make a true CATS vehicle and it will get noticed! It's not an excuse. NASA has, in the past, hampered the efforts of the startups. : This is one reason that seemingly crazy ideas like an SRB derived launch : vehicle are seen coming out of NASA. Keeping the SRB alive means not only : keeping the jobs of the people who work on the SRB, but it also means : keeping the VAB open, the crawlers operational, and the shuttle pads : operational. This means that an SRB launch vehicle *can't* be much cheaper : than the shuttle, because you're keeping much of the shuttle's : infrastructure and standing army around to make it happen. Right now the shuttle is the only game in town other than the Russians and Chinese, and they only once. The gap between SS1 and the shuttle needs to be closed to some degree in order for your standing army to disapear. The "only game in town" is too expensive to truly open up space to anyone but government sponsored astronauts. If that's the kind of future you want, then your point is valid. If you'd like to see civilians in LEO, then NASA vehicles won't get you there. : This standing army and infrastructure is one big reason that the shuttle : isn't really cheaper to operate than the Saturn V. Note that it uses much : of the same (albeit modified) infrastructure. Even worse, much of the : office space in the VAB had to be vacated due to the solids (and : hypergolics?) of the shuttle. Entire new buildings had to be built to : replace this essentially lost office space. I can't help thinking about comparing a row boat to an aircraft carrier. THAT is the same as SS1 and the shuttle. I'm not talking about SS1 here. With a better vehicle design, you shouldn't need VAB's, crawlers, and huge launch pads. Reducing the size and cost of the ground infrastructure will reduce launch costs. Your "old school" launch vehicle designer is so interested in reducing the wet mass of the vehicle itself to the barest minimum that the ground infrastructure costs are ignored. A vehicle proposal like the Delta Clipper didn't need all this ground infrastructure. DC-X proved that this concept ought to work. Certinaly DC-X was small, but even for its size, the infrastructure and ground crews needed to launch it were absolutely *tiny* by traditional aerospace standards. That's the way you reduce launch costs, by looking at all your costs and not worrying so much about the wet mass of your vehicle. What exactly do you want? CATS. : Geez, I'm the one accused of being a conspiracy monger and here you are : convinced that the current group of government contractors in space are : keeping small companies out just to keep the price of launches high. Is : that what you believe? : Actually this has happened. When investors go to ask NASA people if a : startup's ideas are any good, what do you think they say? Certainly it : depends on who in NASA they ask, but the conventional wisdom at NASA is that : spaceflight is necessarily expensive. The startups are going against this : wisdom and are in many ways trying to compete with NASA. Yep and at one time the conventional wisdom about computers was that all that were needed was 5! And that was from Thomas Watson of IBM!! So you agree that conventional wisdom in the launch vehicle market is wrong. Unfortunately, it's hard to convince investors of this "fact" when investors are told that this goes against conventional wisdom. It's even harder when they hear this from the "experts" at spaceflight at NASA, who believe the only way to get people into space is with the (expensive) infrastructure at KSC. : I have news for you, if you had something then they'd use it. Further, if : you had something, you'd be showing it. Since nothing exists, all you : have is shaking fists and whines. : Many startups do not seek or accept government funding. You should find out : why this is true before you start saying I'm making up conspiracies. Well I'm sure that Jobs and Wozniak were happy to sell their Apple IIs to anyone that was willing to buy them. And at the time, the "usual suspects" in the computer industry would say that "that isn't a real computer" because it could never do as much as a mainframe computer. This is *exactly* like SS1 is today. The "usual suspects" in the aerospace industry think SS1 is a toy and say it's "not a real spaceship", because it can't get into orbit. The really important thing to note is that the customers for these "toys" won't necessarily be the existing customers who buy the older "real" products. The customers for these "toys" will largely come from completely new markets. In the case of personal computers (like the IBM PCs, Apples, Commodores, Ataris, and etc.), it was small businesses and individuals who could never afford a mainframe computer. In the case of manned launch vehicles (like the follow-on to SS1) the customers will be individuals looking for "the ultimate thrill", not big companies interested in launching comsats. Completely different market for a completely different vehicle. Eventually though, personal computers became so powerful (in numbers) that they began to replace mainframes for many tasks. As these small, inexpensive, manned space vehicles grow in capabilities (i.e. when they can get into orbit), they too will begin to replace ELV's for many tasks (i.e. small LEO satellite launches). I'm old enough to remember the change from mainframes to peronal computers. I played text games on terminals attached to a minframe as a kid in the early 80's. As a teenager, I bought a C-64 and learned basic programming. At college in the late 80's, I was again using terminals to write my engineering programs (Fortran 77 and C) that ran on huge Unix mainframes (with hundreds of students sharing the same mainframe at the same time). But by the time I neared graduation in the early 90's, I was working on my senior design project on an 80386 class PC, Macintosh computers, and little Sun "pizza boxes" (which ran Unix). Today, I'm working on a Pentium III computer that's at least 10 times more powerful and costs less than 1/10 the money of my first computer cost at work (it was a "high end" SGI workstation that cost the company over $20k). We'll eventually see the same changes happen with manned launch vehicles, but it will take time since the existing markets are very small, so the amount of money which will be invested in the startups is also very small (by big aerospace company standards). : I think that keeping SpaceShip One secret until it was almost completely : developed was a very smart move. The only way they were able to do this was : because they had an investor with deep pockets. Once you start seeking out : funding from many sources, your plans start to become very public and open : to scrutiny from those that have a vested interest in the failure of those : plans. That tends to be the way of many a lot of things. The more that is publicly known the more likely of failure. Exactly. Real change is coming about due to very small groups of investors with deep pockets. : People will do a lot to protect their phoney baloney jobs, just watch : Blazing Saddles. ;-) I might agree with you regarding the oil industry. Could you imagine free energy and what that would do to the oil indsutrialists? Hell they wouldn't be rich anymore as their source of income would literally disappear. In what way do you think that this attitude would be different in the aerospace industry? The attitude we're talking about is part of human nature. Last time I checked, humans were involved in both the oil industry and the aerospace industry. Jeff -- Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.
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