Griffin Remarks for AIAA Space 2005 Conference, 31 August 2005

In article ,
h (Rand Simberg) wrote:


Joe Stout claimed a desire to live in space but was unwilling
and/or unable to discuss circumstances. How about you?

I've done so many times. But basically, the conditions a
technology that allows one to live there in an affordable manner, and
the ability to choose one's own companions and form of government.
There's no particular reason to think that these conditions won't
apply in a relatively (in my lifetime) future.

Right; and for the record, I wasn't unwilling, but rather unable, since
right after my last post on the topic, I left for Europe for a week and
had no net access.

But for the record, my required circumstances are about the same as
Rand's, except that I'd be content with a restricted choice in
government. And I agree with Rand that the technology needed to live
affordably space will most likely appear in the relatively near future.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

On 15 Sep 2005 13:08:44 GMT, in a place far, far away, Jim Davis
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

But there *are* individuals who desire to live in space, so
I'm not sure what the point is of pointing out places on earth
where people don't want to live.

Can you be more specific?

Certainly there are people who desire to live in space under
certain circumstances; circumstances which have not arisen and may
never arise. Certainly space hasn't attracted many settlers given
current conditions.

Of course not. It's currently entirely unaffordable to them.

Jow Stout claimed a desire to live in space but was unwilling
and/or unable to discuss circumstances. How about you?

I've done so many times. But basically, the conditions a
technology that allows one to live there in an affordable manner, and
the ability to choose one's own companions and form of government.
There's no particular reason to think that these conditions won't
apply in a relatively (in my lifetime) future.

h (Rand Simberg) :

On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 06:40:10 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Paul F.
Dietz" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

kert wrote:

http://www.bealaerospace.com/spacenews.htm
" We correctly targeted the alive and well geo-stationary market and
additionally hoped for some space station resupply missions. We were
naively lured into business by NASA's constant remarks about wanting
to encourage privatization and new launch service providers.

When Congress and NASA targeted $10 billion to fund competing launch
systems, we threw in the towel. We simply could not compete with such
government funded boondoggles."

Emphasis on "NASA's constant remarks about wanting to encourage
privatization"

Doesn't seem to be stopping SpaceX, now does it?

I think a more plausible theory is that Beal screwed up somewhere
(in technology or marketing).

And choice of market (GEO comsats). The screwups were on multiple
levels.

Which isn't to say, of course, that fear of NASA competition doesn't
have an effect on the difficulty of raising investment funds.

And Beal also messed up in just understanding people in general. It seemed
to me at the time that he never considered that people would oppose him who
had nothing to do the rocket industry.

His plans to use a small island to launch from ran into problems with local
fishermen and policital pride (the enviroment claims were basicly bogus).

His plans for building a rocket assembly plant in the Virgins did not take
account that some people would oppose building on park land.

And ofcourse he did not have a good fall back position when the GEO SAT
market collapsed.


Earl Colby Pottinger


--
I make public email sent to me! Hydrogen Peroxide Rockets, OpenBeos,
SerialTransfer 3.0, RAMDISK, BoatBuilding, DIY TabletPC. What happened to
the time? http://webhome.idirect.com/~earlcp