CEV to be made commercially available

Eric Chomko wrote:

: And the Saturn V was used by no one except NASA and it
: led...nowhere.

I thought it led us to the moon? Never figured you one for the
lunar hoax myth...

Never did grasp concepts like "context', did you, Eric?

Jim Davis

Jeff Findley wrote:

NASA could do a lot towards researching lower cost engines.

Ahhh.... no. NASA's collective head would explode.

It's not too early for NASA to get out of the launch vehicle
business.

When they can buy a flight that matches their needs (read: heavy
lifter
applicable for moon missions), I'll agree.

That's not a need, that's a desire.

No, it's a need. As in "mandated by Congress/President."

Really? I wasn't aware that the Congress/President specified that NASA
launch missions to the moon with as few launch vehicles as possible.

Non sequitur. The Pres has said "get to the moon." That's the "need."
They cannot buy a launch to the moon, as there's no such product
available. So, they have to pay to have such a product developed.


If you go back far enough, LOR wasn't the only option being
considered. It was seen as the fastest way to get to the moon, but EOR
might have been a more sustainable approach in the long term.

No good reason to assume that. EOR would have cost as much or more to
develop than LOR, and would have potentially cost more to operate.

Or EOR could have cost more time and money to develop, but less to operate
due to economies of scale.

Well, Apollo cost a bucket of money as it was, and the bulk of that was
spent prior to going to the moon, and the program was killed prior to
going to the moon. So if EOR cost *more* to develop up front, it would
have been an even *bigger* target for the budget axe.

If you developed the R&D and manufacturing infrastructure and only
build a few things and then kill the program, the unit cost is
astonishing. EOR would have been no better off here. Perhaps one or two
moon flights that cost *more* than Apollo.

wrote:

And the Saturn V was used by no one except NASA and it
led...nowhere.

It was killed before it even flew. Imagine if Boeing had
undertaken the 777 program, built a dozen prototypes... but
then, due to the board of directors being drunk one day,
officially terminated the project before the first one flew.

Bogus analogy, Scott. No one would have had any objection if Boeing
or McDonnell Douglas or NAR or Grumman or anyone else had used
Saturn V, CSM, or LM technology for their own profitable commercial
products a la Boeing with the B-47 and 707. But there were no such
products. And you know and I know and everyone knows there will be
no such products from an SDHLV.

But you could not care less about that, I suspect.

Jim Davis

Jim Davis wrote:
And you know and I know and everyone knows there will be
no such products from an SDHLV.

But you could not care less about that, I suspect.

No, I don't, because that's *ENTIRELY* *IRRELEVANT.* The question is
whether ESAS can work, not whether it will be profitable.

Eric Chomko wrote:
Paul F. Dietz ) wrote:
: Eric Chomko wrote:

: Totally false! I can tell you that the unmanned sector of NASA is
: thriving.

: 'Thriving' as in 'being laid off', right? You are following
: the news from JPL, yes?

CA as a whole is in trouble moreso that is JPL.

Your irrelevant blather is noted.

: Of course I didn't say that. What gives me the sense of small
: satisfaction is seeing my strategic view reinforced, not in seeing
: astronauts die.

You sound like W when a dead soldier comes home and his vision for Iraq.
Sorry most of us tend to see more than your "strategic view". Speaking of
which, do you support the military in space or is that off limits for them
as well?

You clearly have serious neurotic ticks involving war and W. Do try
to distinguish between your hallucinations and what I am actually saying.

The military has space applications that are cost-justified. Recon
sats, weather sats, communications, early warning, navigation, to name
a few. Why should I consider space 'off-limits' to the military?

I can't think of anything in *manned* spaceflight that would be
very useful to the military, and the military apparently can't see
anything either.

Well anyone garnering satisfaction from failure is a little warped in my
book.

Gross misrepresentation of my position noted. Not that I expected
anything more from you.

You seem to view politics as sport. Typical dumb, educated
American...

Typical logic and integrity-free net slime...

Paul

Eric Chomko wrote:

: There are unmanned space activities that clearly do deliver
: value justifying their cost.

Check it out, everyone of them is in a blue-state. Don't believe me? Check
it out!

So effing what, fool? I'm not critiquing NASA's manned space program
because of state colors. I'm critiquing it because it's a waste of money.


: I will readily admit war, overall, has been very wasteful. The cold war
: consumed, what, $20 trillion in current dollars? In many cases not
: fighting would be even more costly, however. Do you think, for example,
: that we should not have used bombers and carriers in WW2? That we
: should not have gone to war with Afghanistan after 9/11?

I agree with WWII and Afghanistan, but disagree with Iraq, as it was a
ruse. Which we are beginning to find out with leaks of CIA agent's names,
etc. But with advent of the bomb war has changed. Do you not agree?

I don't know of Iraq was outright fraud, but I do know I didn't
support going to war there.

As for the bomb... war has changed, yes, but then war is always
changing. Perhaps the existence of nuclear bombs means we have to
go to war even more, lest insane countries threaten our annihilation.


: The 'success' of manned spaceflight has been largely one of meeting
: arbitrary, self-defined goals.

Which is typical in a prototypical environment such as manned spaceflight.

The point is not that the environment is prototypical, the point is
that it doesn't connect at all with real external goals. We're going
to the moon because we're going to the moon, apparently.


: You fool, art is life in this sense! Going to the moon was superior to all
: of warfare from day one on earth.

: Risible nonsense, Chomko. A war to defeat a genocidal dictator bent
: on world conquest, for example, is incomparably more valuable and
: worthwhile than a program that, at enormous cost, sent 12 people
: to the moon. A war to eliminate slavery, for example, is more valuable.
: A war to replace autocracy with democracy, as fought here in
: the 18th century, is clealy more valuable.

So you admit that no war since WWII other than the brief stint in
Afghanistan was worth fighting? That would leave going to the moon as more
useful than war during the same time. Okay, I overspoke when I said from
day 1, but certainly true since WWII.

I didn't make that claim. What I was doing was shooting down your
nonsensical categorical statement about war, by showing three obvious
counterexamples.

No doubt going to moon was better than, say, the Vietnam War, but
that's damning with faint praise.

No, we can spend money on needless wars or space exploration. I opt for
space.

And now you're back to your ludicrous false dichotomy. I'd vote for
'neither' (if space exploration means the current manned space
program), if possible.

Paul

Eric Chomko wrote:

: Don't forget Columbus is an utterly bogus analogy for space exploration.

Bull****! It works just fine. Was there a commercial fishing industry in
Portugal in 1492? THAT is your commercial space program! What Columbus was
beyond the shores of Europe. The only thing bogus is your inability to see
the viability of the analogy.

Was the moon already colonized 12,000 years before by neolithic tribes?
Can we settle on the moon using the technology available to the average
US citizen? Does the moon have essentially the same biosphere as
here? No? Then stop with the idiot analogy.

Paul

" wrote in
message oups.com...

Jim Davis wrote:
And you know and I know and everyone knows
there will be no such products from an SDHLV.

But you could not care less about that, I suspect.

No, I don't, because that's *ENTIRELY*
*IRRELEVANT.* The question is whether ESAS
can work, not whether it will be profitable.

Usually your statements can at least be justified in one dubious context
or another, but for this one, it is hard to go past stupid. Just because
the returns of some projects can be very long term and very distributed
does not mean that they do not have to be profitable. Such a dead end
technical object achieved purely by throwing excessive amounts of money
at the problem will again put space settlement back many years.

What I find particularly offensive is that the $100 billion wasted by
this government affiliated monopolistic power group - preaching that
they are doing this for everyone else's own good, will in effect have to
be recouped by those commercial ventures that eventually follow. There
is only a fixed amount of up front funding for space activities which is
acceptable to the people at large, NASA is again abusing its
monopolistic position to take near all of it. People make little
distinction between government and start up space spending. NASA is
again mortgaging the future of space and the public will expect the
start ups to eventually pay it back.

ESAS adds nothing to the later commercial ventures which will hopefully
still come. Existence proof that it is doable was provided by Apollo and
no commercial follow on will use HLVs or any of the other order of
magnitude too expensive hardware that will be designed for them. By the
time the commercial ventures work their way up to HLV, any ESAS
technology will long be irrelevant. ESAS is a dead end mortgage on the
future.

Pete.

wrote:

No, I don't, because that's *ENTIRELY* *IRRELEVANT.* The
question is whether ESAS can work, not whether it will be
profitable.

Scott, this is an incredible statement, indeed it is an admission of
sorts. It's hard to escape the conclusion that you do not care if
ESAS enriches or impoverishes the nation; you just want to see
Americans on the moon, consequences be damned.

Jim Davis

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:

:Fred J. McCall wrote:
:
: :So you agree or disagree with Paul's assessment? I tend to think he's
: :right.
:
: Well, his is a great path if you think the general populace is right
: to be apathetic about space and you want to continue that.
:
:The general populace's apathy is a rational response to the situation.
:What, exactly, is the manned space program doing for them or their
:descendants?

It wasn't doing anything before and lots of people were excited about
it, Paul.

:The only complaint I have about the apathy is that it's allowing
:the charade to continue.

As opposed to killing human access to space (and any interest in same
by most folks) outright?

: :Sending a few NASA astronauts to the moon won't make us any more of a
: :spacefaring nation than Apollo did, so what's the point of Apollo 2.0?
:
: Well, as you pointed out, right now most of the American people could
: give a fig about space. Not sending people isn't the way to get or
: keep their interest. When we were going someplace (before NASA got
: boring) a lot more people were interested.
:
:More people were interested, until after the first landing or two.
:ISS on the moon is not going to be any more interesting than ISS
:in LEO, except perhaps if astronauts start dying there.
:
:Anyway, if your goal is to ensure public tax dollars keep flowing
:down a black hole, then public interest is a relevant metric. If
:your goal is to actually move significant human activity into space,
:it's irrelevant. For the latter, you need positive ROI, and the sooner
:the better, so self-funded exponential growth can take off.

Except that's not going to happen because you'll never get over the
'hump'. You're basically stuck at COMSAT sorts of applications. No
need for people there.

: There's your point. Or do you think we'll somehow become "more of a
: spacefaring nation" by killing human access to space outright?
:
:Since ESAS won't do anything significant to advance that goal,
:killing NASA would be no worse, and would save money.

No, it would be worse because even fewer people would be interested in
the future. The money saved would go where, do you think, Paul?

:Think also about applying your argument historically. If the manned
:space program had been terminated after Apollo, would we be closer
:to being a 'spacefaring nation' today?

Nope.

:Avoiding the shuttle fiasco would have been a huge benefit,

To who? Terminating space, remember? Contrary to what your sort
generally think, cutting manned space does NOT lead to more money for
non-manned space. It leads to a cut in ALL space.

:and US expendable launchers would be much better than they now are.

I can't find a single reason to believe that.

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn