Seriously pathological meme

"The technology isn't the hard part," Diamandis said. "The hard part
is the money."

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1...237427,00.html

If that were true, the hard part would be over since NASA spends
billions on launch technology every year.

I think Diamandis owes the winning X-Prize engineers more credit than
he's implicitly giving them -- especially if the winners turn out to
be one of the under-funded teams.

In article ,
James Bowery wrote:
"The technology isn't the hard part," Diamandis said. "The hard part
is the money."
If that were true, the hard part would be over since NASA spends
billions on launch technology every year.

You have to remember to multiply the raw dollar amount by the efficiency
of the organization receiving it. For today's NASA, billions is severe
underfunding. :-(
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

In article ,
(James Bowery) wrote:

"The technology isn't the hard part," Diamandis said. "The hard part
is the money."

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1...237427,00.html

If that were true, the hard part would be over since NASA spends
billions on launch technology every year.

No they don't -- they spend billions every year maintaining decades-old
launch technology. That's not the same thing at all.

Obviously money alone is not sufficient to bring launch costs down, but
technology alone is not sufficient either. It takes a lot of different
stuff. But among the companies that have all the other right stuff,
money is often the hard part.

I think Diamandis owes the winning X-Prize engineers more credit than
he's implicitly giving them -- especially if the winners turn out to
be one of the under-funded teams.

Well, it won't be; but I don't think Diamandis is short-changing the
engineers. We all know that wonderful engineering is going on. But
what kept those engineers from doing the same thing 5 or 10 years ago
isn't that the technology was too crude; it was that the money wasn't
there. And what will have routine suborbital tourism flying in another
5 or 10 years isn't that technology will have advanced; it's that
investment capital (i.e. money) will have become available where it
wasn't before.

Best,
- Joe

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(James Bowery) wrote in message . com...
"The technology isn't the hard part," Diamandis said. "The hard part
is the money."

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1...237427,00.html

If that were true, the hard part would be over since NASA spends
billions on launch technology every year.

I think Diamandis owes the winning X-Prize engineers more credit than
he's implicitly giving them -- especially if the winners turn out to
be one of the under-funded teams.

Yes.

If all of the X-Prize teams were given $5 million each to build their
vehicles, almost all of them would fail for completely technical
reasons. It took Burt much longer than he expected to get where he
is, and the reasons had absolutely nothing to do with money. I'm also
spending what needs to be spent on our design, and the technical
challenges are a long way from trivial.

Lots of people act like they can build a spaceship if only some
enlightened soul would give them lots of money to do so. For some,
this is probably a strategically chosen attitude to inspire confidence
in potential investors, but some of the people are just delusional.

Given enough money and time, almost anything can be made to fly, but
that's not what we are talking about.

John Carmack
www.armadilloaerospace.com