#32
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Reconsideration
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#33
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Reconsideration
Jim Davis wrote in
. 160.156: Rand Simberg wrote: Umm, maybe you haven't realized it yet, but that was Rand's April Fools post. Pat's always been a little slow on the uptake, albeit amusingly so... I was buying it hook, line, and sinker until I got to the part where he realized Mark Whittington has been right all along. :-) That long, huh? I was onto him by the third paragraph, where he was writing nice things about the shuttle. :-) I bought the disappointment with SpaceX and his turn of heart on ISS, if only because a lot of alt.space advocates are realizing that COTS will have a much smaller market if ISS isn't completed. I think I started skimming once I got to the part about Griffin being a "real rocket scientist" - re-reading the original post now, I'm just now spotting some of the howlers below that point that I missed the first time around. -- JRF Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail, check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and think one step ahead of IBM. |
#34
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Reconsideration
Lawrence Gales wrote in
: Well, one failure should not be cause for that much dismay, although I too was very much looking forward to a successful launch. The one major thing that really bothered me about SpaceX, however, was their developing a new engine. Why in God's green earth did Elon do that? A Russian NK-39 is not all that much bigger and has far higher performance (Isp of 349 vs 305). He could have come twice as far for half the money had he chosen to use a Russian engine, and then could make the structure much heavier and more robust leading to easier reusability. Perhaps he's thinking long-term? That it's dangerous to leave Russia as a sole-source supplier of rocket engines? Perhaps he wants to sell launches to the DoD? Witness the problems with Atlas V and domestic production of the RD-180. Perhaps he thinks he can do better than the Russians in the long term, but realizes that the only way to get good at building rocket engines is, well, to *build* them, and lots of them, and accept the fact that the early attempts won't perform as well? -- JRF Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail, check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and think one step ahead of IBM. |
#35
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Reconsideration
On Thu, 06 Apr 2006 09:18:53 -0400, in a place far, far away, "Jorge
R. Frank" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: I was buying it hook, line, and sinker until I got to the part where he realized Mark Whittington has been right all along. :-) That long, huh? I was onto him by the third paragraph, where he was writing nice things about the shuttle. :-) I bought the disappointment with SpaceX and his turn of heart on ISS, if only because a lot of alt.space advocates are realizing that COTS will have a much smaller market if ISS isn't completed. I think I started skimming once I got to the part about Griffin being a "real rocket scientist" - re-reading the original post now, I'm just now spotting some of the howlers below that point that I missed the first time around. Another one that's really inside baseball is the fact that I don't have any (and on my current life trajectory, am unlikely to have any) children, which makes for pretty dismal prospects for my grand and great-grandchildren... |
#36
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Reconsideration
On Thu, 06 Apr 2006 07:00:55 -0400, in a place far, far away,
(Eric Chomko) made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: Let me reiterate. I want to be wrong, proven wrong. That's good, since you get your stated heart's desire every day, multiple times, often in hilarious ways. |
#37
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Reconsideration
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#38
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Reconsideration
"Jorge R. Frank" wrote:
if only because a lot of alt.space advocates are realizing that COTS will have a much smaller market if ISS isn't completed What a concept! ISS has been such a fine whipping boy for dissatisfaction with NASA, Clinton, Congress, Russia, international space efforts in general, and high-inclination orbits, that one could easily forget it is the only (and will remain for some time the largest) DESTINATION for manned orbital flight and cargo. One might suggest that if your goal is "airline-like" transportation between earth and destinations in LEO, it's kind of stupid -- cutting off your nose to spite your face -- to ignore or verbally trash the destination that exists in favor of Bigelow Hiltons to come. But it's hard to hear such suggestions when so many axes are being ground. |
#39
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Reconsideration
On Thu, 06 Apr 2006 19:13:29 -0400, in a place far, far away, Monte
Davis made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: "Jorge R. Frank" wrote: if only because a lot of alt.space advocates are realizing that COTS will have a much smaller market if ISS isn't completed What a concept! ISS has been such a fine whipping boy for dissatisfaction with NASA, Clinton, Congress, Russia, international space efforts in general, and high-inclination orbits, that one could easily forget it is the only (and will remain for some time the largest) DESTINATION for manned orbital flight and cargo. For some values of "some time." Bigelow and Branson have been talking hotels... One might suggest that if your goal is "airline-like" transportation between earth and destinations in LEO, it's kind of stupid -- cutting off your nose to spite your face -- to ignore or verbally trash the destination that exists in favor of Bigelow Hiltons to come. But it's hard to hear such suggestions when so many axes are being ground. The problem is that the market for ISS is so trivial, that it drives to the wrong technical solutions. COTS (assuming it succeeds) is OK, as a sideshow, but I seriously doubt that it will be seen in the future as having played a major role in opening up space. |
#40
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Reconsideration
a lot of alt.space advocates are realizing that COTS will have a much
smaller market if ISS isn't completed Depends on the size and nature of the market that the alt.launcher company is aiming for. ISS could be 2x or 3x the size of the satellite market (very roughly, and depending on all kinds of assumptions about both what happens with ISS and with satellites). So it isn't necessarily a bad idea to try for the ISS business, but it is a smaller volume than what people are thinking of in terms of tourism. And, for many startups, smaller than the volume that will be required to make the case for the upside potential of a cheaper/more operable new launcher. |
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