an open letter to Pete

NASA, or any government agency, can not and should not
be involved in developing improved commercial launch
systems. This is a job solely for private enterprise
and cannot adequately be done otherwise. The more
the government meddles, and fails, in this, the
longer it keeps the dynamism and innovation of
commercial enterprise away from the endeavor, and
the longer the development of innovative and
efficient launch vehicles is put off into the
future.

Government programs have often played a role in
advancing technologies. But rarely is the product
of government funded development suitable for
commercial use unmodified. Even rarer still is
for such beasts to be particularly cost effective.
Precisely because costs are less important to
hyper-funded governments of fully industrialized
states. In all the areas where government funded
research and development (such as, say, jet
aircraft) played a major role it has always been
continued commercial development which brought
the major breakthroughs in cost. Governments
don't do cost breakthrough developments, they do
capabilities breakthrough developments, because
that's what they need. The simple fact is that if
the US government wants to send people to Mars at
the cost of 10, 20, 100, or 500 billion dollars,
they can do it. And to a large extent the cost is
less of a concern than the political will to just
get it done.

The US government is an easy target to look to as a
source for the evolution of launch vehicles, because
it has lots of money and is a single entity. And
precisely because of its money it has the ability to
get things done when it wants things done. Compared
to the nebulous, difficult to define, impossible to
quantify, and even harder to predict process of free
market investment and development, the government is
the obvious "go to guy" for any major undertaking,
including making spaceflight cheaper. But in this
case they have almost no ability to actually do it.

(Tony Rusi) wrote in message . com...

that we were going to attack Syria next. Since the Bekaa Valley is in
Syria and the supposed site of Armegeddon, I was really freaked out!

You're not the first person I heard say this.

Since I am a Christian, I thought we were all going to die within
days. I was completely useless at work and I got fired, deservedly so.


But you are the first I've heard say that, especially in an open
letter to a complete stranger who you're trying to convince
of...anything. When trying to convince someone of an idea, it's best
to leave out any facts about yourself that make you appear to have
extremely poor judgement.

Hey Pete Aldridge, since we're at it, I got some stuff to ask you too:

Can you fix this whole great society mess your generation has foisted
on mine?
What about closing all those tax loopholes to make it fair by
replacing it with a flat tax?
What do you think about maybe stopping agricultural subsidies now that
the cold war's over?
How about introducing some competence and sanity in environmental
regulations?

What would Brian Boytano do?

Tom Merkle

"Tony Rusi" wrote in message
om...
Tom,

What do you think of Skull and Bones?



--PLONK--