If the saturn family of launchers had continued, with the shuttleon a saturn, von braun wanted to make saturn reusable

On Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 11:36:25 AM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...
The goal of Apollo was beating the
Soviet Union to the moon.

According to JFK the goal of NASA was to land men on the moon
and return them safely to Earth before the decade of the 60s
was out because this goal would best serve us to organize our
talent and resources to sail the oceans of space and remain
leaders in this new and exciting frontier going forward.
We choose to go to the moon and do the other things...

Again, you're quoting and paraphrasing from JFK's speeches which were
intended for public consumption, not the "behind closed doors" meetings
with the NASA Administrator where JFK revealed what he *REALLY* thought
of the manned space program.


Having never been in a senior executive role and been nothing but a lying sack of **** yourself, you have got it exactly backward! A leader tells his followers where he is going, he doesn't lie to them as he beats the **** out of his vendors and tells them all sorts of garbage to keep the price down when they try to over charge him.






Please read this transcript of just such a meeting and cure your
persistent ignorance on this topic:

http://history.nasa.gov/JFK-Webbconv...transcript.pdf

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

I've read this and much more. You have not. That's why you have these fantasies.

On Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 11:39:55 AM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...
http://history.nasa.gov/JFK-Webbconv...transcript.pdf

President Kennedy: The only... We're not going to settle
the four hundred million this morning. I want to take a
look closely at what Dave Bell... But I do think we ought
get it, you know, really clear that the policy ought to
be that this is the top-priority program of the Agency,
and one of the two things, except for defense, the top
priority of the United States government. I think that
that is the position we ought to take. Now, this may not
change anything about that schedule, but at least we
ought to be clear, otherwise we shouldn't be spending
this kind of money because I'm not that interested in
space. I think it's good; I think we ought to know about
it; we're ready to spend reasonable amounts of money.
But we're talking about these fantastic expenditures
which wreck our budget and all these other domestic
programs and the only justification for it, in my
opinion, to do it in this time or fashion, is because
we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting
behind, as we did by a couple years, by God, we
passed them.


You're an expert at cherry picking documents and then portraying them inappropriately.


LOL! This is one of *the* most important conversations JFK had with
the NASA Administrator.

You've never had senior executive profit and loss responsibility. So, of course you don't understand what's going on!

The President made it clear to the nation and the world what his intentions were. The vendors he relied on to make it happen in response, tried to hold JFK and the nation up, charging far more than anyone expected! So, what is JFK to do? He does what ANY competent executive does, he calls the administrator and key vendors into his office and tells them anything they need to hear to beat the prices down! That's it!

JFK was working behind the scenes as well to bring the Soviets in as COMPETITORS TO THESE VENDORS. He didn't want to beat the Soviets at any price, he wanted an alternative field of conflict to war with the Soviets. Kruschev was going to agree to cooperate with the USA, and in 1964 he would have challenged the US defense contractors to beat the Soviets IN PRICE AND PERFORMANCE - or lose out to them!

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/russia-97h.html

In this conversation, he makes it crystal clear
that all of those other "lofty goals" you're so fond of were *not*
important.

No it doesn't. You don't get what was going on because you have never had profit and loss repsonbility. You don't like to your followers about your goals. You lie to conniving vendors who over-charge you once they know your goals. You tell them you're not so committed and don't really want all you said you wanted.

Look you never take your kid brother with you to buy a car if he can't keep his enthusiasm in check. You never tell the seller how much you like the car. This just needlessly drives the price up. You might even tell a seller you don't really like the car when you do. Stuff like that. Same thing here you clueless idiot!

The goal was beating the Soviet Union to the moon,

You are hopelessly confused you freaking lunatic.

LBJ made beating the Russians to the moon the goal after November 1963.

JFKs goal after the Cuban Missile Crisis was to make peace with the Soviets and find another field where the two nations could vie against one another that didn't involve incinerating the planet or killing thousands of Americans every week in Asia!

to prove
the superiority of the US technologically, ideologically, and
economically.

This was the post assassination propaganda. It was rejected as the war in Vietnam ramped up and US cities and campuses exploded in the wake of continued assassinations of political leaders (Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czUx2gvjdJk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3cAsASTTdw

In other words, JFK said the goal was to *win* the Space
Race, not do the other things you keep talking about as if they were
JFK's real goals.

JFK's goal was to avoid a nuclear conflagration with the Soviets and he felt that space travel would capture the imagination of adventurous types to were inspired by armed conflict.

They were not.

Yes they were.

You are completely wrong on this
topic.

No, you are you lunatic. There's not one bit of greasy **** the CIA puts out that you don't gobble down and ask for more. lol.


Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

On Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 11:47:06 AM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

On Monday, June 29, 2015 at 9:18:40 PM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...
Irony, thy name is Mookie. Henry Spencer has forgotten more about
this stuff than a dip**** wannabe like you will ever know.


This is true. Mook is nothing like Henry Spencer. If Henry Spencer
were still here, I'd like to think he'd set Mook straight.

I'm commenting on your abject ignorance, no one elses.

You've directly commented on a Henry Spencer quote which is my .sig for
a reason.

Yes. It doesn't make any sense. YOU posted it without any other information around it. So, any error likely arises from YOU.


LOX is pennies per pound.

Air is free.

Kerosene is tens of cents per pound.

Air is still free.

Hypersonic air breathing engines are designed primarily to "save" on LOX
by using air instead.

No, air breathing engines are used to reduce propellant fraction by not carrying LOX around. This allows greater payload on orbit for a given vehicle size which reduces overall cost of putting payload into orbit.


Hypersonic air breathers also tend to trade LH2
for kerosene.

True.

LH2 is more expensive to buy and handle than kerosene,

When? This was true in 1960s. Its not true today. Hydrocarbon fuels have increased in price since the 1960s - dramatically. Similarly, the cost of liquid hydrogen and its handling has fallen in equally dramatic ways.

Today, in many parts of the world, especially those parts that tax hydrocarbon fuels to cover the environmental cost of those fuels, hydrogen is cheaper than kerosene.

http://heshydrogen.com/hydrogen-fuel-cost-vs-gasoline/

Over the next 7 years, the time it takes to develop a new space launcher, hydrogen cost will be even more favorable when compared to hydrocarbon fuels like kerosene.


mostly because it is a deep cryogenic and tends to "boil off" if not
kept under active cooling (i.e. storage costs are higher than kerosene).

Kerosene and petrol have a shelf life as well.

MEMS based cryocoolers and superinsulated tanks have been developed since the 1960s to make even automotive use of hydrogen as safe simple and reliable as hydrocarbon use.

http://www.computerworld.com/article...he-future.html

Kerosene burning rocket engines are also cheaper to manufacture and
maintain than hypersonic air breathing engines.

Not true.


On top of all of this, a hypersonic air breather will cost billions more
to develop

Not true.

(e.g. Skylon with SABRE engines)

Are technologically impossible and a distraction from real hypersonic engines like the ones Fred Billig and William Avery developed.

than a reusable LOX/kerosene
or LOX/methane launch vehicle.

Nonsense. When the USAF released its secrecy order against Billig's patent application in 1981 the Australian University built one for $150,000 in a few months.

The fact is that there is little to no upside to hypersonic air
breathers in today's launch market.

More stuff and nonsense.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

On Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 12:41:57 PM UTC-4, Alain Fournier wrote:
On 06/30/2015 11:47 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

On Monday, June 29, 2015 at 9:18:40 PM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...
Irony, thy name is Mookie. Henry Spencer has forgotten more about
this stuff than a dip**** wannabe like you will ever know.


This is true. Mook is nothing like Henry Spencer. If Henry Spencer
were still here, I'd like to think he'd set Mook straight.

I'm commenting on your abject ignorance, no one elses.

You've directly commented on a Henry Spencer quote which is my .sig for
a reason.

LOX is pennies per pound. Kerosene is tens of cents per pound.
Hypersonic air breathing engines are designed primarily to "save" on LOX

I do agree with you, but hypersonic air breathing is not about saving on
LOX. It is about saving the mass of the LOX. The other points you make
are correct and making an air-breathing launch vehicle economical needs
a little magic or something of the kind.

by using air instead. Hypersonic air breathers also tend to trade LH2
for kerosene. LH2 is more expensive to buy and handle than kerosene,
mostly because it is a deep cryogenic and tends to "boil off" if not
kept under active cooling (i.e. storage costs are higher than kerosene).
Kerosene burning rocket engines are also cheaper to manufacture and
maintain than hypersonic air breathing engines.

On top of all of this, a hypersonic air breather will cost billions more
to develop (e.g. Skylon with SABRE engines) than a reusable LOX/kerosene
or LOX/methane launch vehicle.

The fact is that there is little to no upside to hypersonic air
breathers in today's launch market.

Jeff


Alain Fournier

It needs the US DOD to establish a list of qualified vendors to review the information it has kept secret since 1965 and offer its use to these vendors for commercial application.

In article ,
says...

On 06/30/2015 11:47 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

On Monday, June 29, 2015 at 9:18:40 PM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...
Irony, thy name is Mookie. Henry Spencer has forgotten more about
this stuff than a dip**** wannabe like you will ever know.


This is true. Mook is nothing like Henry Spencer. If Henry Spencer
were still here, I'd like to think he'd set Mook straight.

I'm commenting on your abject ignorance, no one elses.

You've directly commented on a Henry Spencer quote which is my .sig for
a reason.

LOX is pennies per pound. Kerosene is tens of cents per pound.
Hypersonic air breathing engines are designed primarily to "save" on LOX

I do agree with you, but hypersonic air breathing is not about saving on
LOX. It is about saving the mass of the LOX. The other points you make
are correct and making an air-breathing launch vehicle economical needs
a little magic or something of the kind.

True, and you would have a point if cost only scaled with the dry mass
of a launch vehicle. But, it also scales with complexity, and a
hypersonic air breather is complex indeed.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

On Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 11:03:36 PM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

On 06/30/2015 11:47 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

On Monday, June 29, 2015 at 9:18:40 PM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...
Irony, thy name is Mookie. Henry Spencer has forgotten more about
this stuff than a dip**** wannabe like you will ever know.


This is true. Mook is nothing like Henry Spencer. If Henry Spencer
were still here, I'd like to think he'd set Mook straight.

I'm commenting on your abject ignorance, no one elses.

You've directly commented on a Henry Spencer quote which is my .sig for
a reason.

LOX is pennies per pound. Kerosene is tens of cents per pound.
Hypersonic air breathing engines are designed primarily to "save" on LOX

I do agree with you, but hypersonic air breathing is not about saving on
LOX. It is about saving the mass of the LOX. The other points you make
are correct and making an air-breathing launch vehicle economical needs
a little magic or something of the kind.

True, and you would have a point if cost only scaled with the dry mass
of a launch vehicle.

Obviously you've never taken any of Ms. Wilcox's courses at MIT.

But, it also scales with complexity,

Not on the first order it doesn't. Go back to class your moron.

and a
hypersonic air breather is complex indeed.

Only because it's details are highly classified.

Sheez.


Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

In article ,
says...

On Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 11:03:36 PM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:

True, and you would have a point if cost only scaled with the dry mass
of a launch vehicle.

Obviously you've never taken any of Ms. Wilcox's courses at MIT.

I said "if cost *only* scaled with dry mass". Can you read Mook?

Note that SpaceX's Falcon 9 has higher dry mass than "needed" because
its LOX/kerosene engines lack the higher ISP of the Russian RD-180 used
on the Atlas 5, yet which launch vehicle is cheaper?

But, it also scales with complexity,

Not on the first order it doesn't. Go back to class your moron.

I never said it scales with complexity in the first order because the
devil is in the details. But one *can* make that argument if you pick
the correct starting point.

The Big Dumb Booster would have been quite cheap on a per pound of dry
mass basis, and there is nothing very difficult about a pressure fed
liquid fueled rocket engine. It's the simplest liquid fueled rocket
engine possible. It would have been cheap because it would have been
made in a shipyard with maraging steel (HY-140) for the structure.

And do note to a first order approximation, aerospace materials
(especially composites, titanium, and the like) *are* far more expensive
per pound than shipbuilding steel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_dumb_booster

and a
hypersonic air breather is complex indeed.

Only because it's details are highly classified.

Sheez.

Black programs are of no use to a sci.space discussion, yet you keep
trotting them out. You should be posting to a military newsgroup
instead.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

On Friday, July 3, 2015 at 3:51:33 AM UTC+12, Fred J. McCall wrote:
wrote:


I agree with you Jeff that JFK was not to give up to win the moon race. Had
the Soviets accepted his offer it would have ended their moon race but
not anything in Apollo - except one Russian astronaut per moon landing.


Which would have been seen as the Russians only being able to get to
the Moon if they hitched a ride with us, which would have been a huge
political loss for them. Pretty obvious they were never going to
accept.


--
You are
What you do
When it counts.

Your understanding of international politics of the 1960s is on par with your understanding of everything else in your life. Namely, you have no understanding of anything you love talking about.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-4209/ch2-4.htm

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/russia-97h.html

https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=...enture&f=false

On Friday, July 3, 2015 at 3:08:04 AM UTC+12, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:

On Monday, June 29, 2015 at 9:11:20 PM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

On Friday, June 26, 2015 at 10:20:38 PM UTC-4, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:
"JF Mezei" wrote in message
eb.com...

On 15-06-26 13:05, Jeff Findley wrote:

You're ignoring money. Saturn V was canceled because it cost too much
fracking money to fly.

In what way would the Saturn-5 engines costs more than SSMEs ? Were they
even more complex ?


They were simpler. But that's not what Jeff said. He said the Saturn V was
more expensive to fly, not that the F-1 engines were more expensive.

Jeff was wrong. The Shuttle was not less expensive than a reusable Saturn V.

Mook is wrong,

No I'm not.


Yeah you are, but as usual you are incapable of seeing it.


NASA never developed a reusable Saturn V.

So? We're talking about the cost of the fly back Saturn program versus the cost of the Shuttle program.


Nobody ever developed a fly-back Saturn V, either.


As I said in a prior post, there were many *proposed* variants of Saturn
V, but the variants would have needed development money and time (years)
to bring them to fruition.

Yet, the Skylab shows just how cheaply and just how quickly the Saturn V variants could be developed.

McDonnell Douglas received the contract to build two Skylab space stations August 1969 and delivered the first Skylab May 1973 for less than $1.2 billion including launch costs.

The Space Shuttle program was formally signed off on January 1972 and launched in April 1981 for a cost greater than the Apollo program.


Mookie comparing apples and aardvarks. Skylab and the cost to CONVERT
a booster into a manned can (which was separate from all the design
work) is pretty irrelevant. Mookie also likes to not inflation adjust
numbers so that old programs look ever so cheap. So let's try and get
to where we're at least comparing two pieces of fruit:

Apollo Program (inflation adjusted): $130 billion over roughly a dozen
years for fewer than two dozen launches.

Shuttle Program (inflation adjusted): Just under $200 billion over
30+ years for 135 flights.

So, yeah, the Space Shuttle program cost more than the Apollo program.
It also ran roughly three times as long with an order of magnitude
more launches.



Any chance they could have converted those engines to be re-usable ?

Maybe.

The F-1 and J2 engines were fired on a test stand several times before they were approved for use on the vehicle. No maybe's about it.

Congress's beef was not with the engines, it was with the overall cost
of the vehicle on a per launch basis. Quite simply, Saturn V was too
expensive for an ongoing program.

Nonsense. The Saturn V program began in January 1962 and launched the first Saturn V in November 1967. A dozen subsequent launches were made through 1973. Six of these landed men on the moon. Three of these orbited the moon. One orbited the Earth. Two were unmanned.

In addition four Saturn Vs were built and not flown.

Total cost was $6.4 billion.


Cite? Inflation adjusted? Including development costs?


For example at least one had ben test fired 35 times. In service,
they probably would have been torn down much like the earlier SSMEs were
until more confidence was developed in their re-usee.

Tear down and reassembly costs only 4% of the original build.



However, the problem is retrieving them. There was a least one
Saturn V
variation proposal I recall that would have jettisoned the outer four
engines and recovering them. The problem though is landing them in
salt-water is not good for the metals and electronics. One advantage of
landing the SSMEs with the shuttle was they landed high and dry with no
impact damage.

Which is why the winged flyback booster was proposed for all stages.

And would have cost billions of dollars and many years to develop.

It would have cost about 8% the cost of the Space Shuttle and taken 18 months compared to the Shuttle's nearly 10 years of development.


Because in Mookie World, nothing can go wrong...


Congress did not have the patience for that.

Nonsense.

Skylab shows the variants cost on the order of a billion dollars each and took months, not decades, to implement.


Skylab was turning a booster into a can. That cost is irrelevant to
the sort of development you're talking about. And are you including
all the design studies, etc, or just the cost to actually bend the
metal?


Seems to me like today, we are again in need of heavy lift rockets, so
it isn't as if Apollo was a one off thing whose tech would never again
been needed.

Except Apollo was a one-off.

No, Greg doesn't know what he's talking about. The Apollo/Saturn was designed as part of an integrated modular interplanetary development system.

Should have, would have, could have.

The Saturn V was what it was.


Yes, it was, but you're in denial about what it was.


Skylab proves the flexibility and speed with which these things were done.


Hogwash.

snip


The goal of Apollo was beating the
Soviet Union to the moon.

According to JFK the goal of NASA was to land men on the moon and return them safely to Earth before the decade of the 60s was out


Precisely. We did that and we were done. The single purpose hardware
was too expensive to repurpose.

snip MookLunacy


LOR was faster and cheaper,

Direct ascent was fastest and cheapest of all.


Apparently not, or we'd have done it that way.

snip MookLunacy


development was winding down (years before a successful manned lunar
landing).


snip MookLunacy



Had the USA stuck with the NERVA and Direct Ascent program, as JFK science advisor Jerome Weisner said, this would have been obvious to all.

But that was *not* the goal.

Yes it was.


And so we see that Mookie even then heard what he wanted to hear and
disregarded the rest.


Have you even listened to the JFK
tapes????????

I listened to the Rice speech when it was broadcast to my school.

http://history.nasa.gov/JFK-Webbconv...transcript.pdf

President Kennedy: The only... We're not going to settle
the four hundred million this morning. I want to take a
look closely at what Dave Bell... But I do think we ought
get it, you know, really clear that the policy ought to
be that this is the top-priority program of the Agency,
and one of the two things, except for defense, the top
priority of the United States government. I think that
that is the position we ought to take. Now, this may not
change anything about that schedule, but at least we
ought to be clear, otherwise we shouldn't be spending
this kind of money because I'm not that interested in
space. I think it's good; I think we ought to know about
it; we're ready to spend reasonable amounts of money.
But we're talking about these fantastic expenditures
which wreck our budget and all these other domestic
programs and the only justification for it, in my
opinion, to do it in this time or fashion, is because
we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting
behind, as we did by a couple years, by God, we
passed them.


You're an expert at cherry picking documents and then portraying them inappropriately. JFK was fully committed to creating an alternative to war that had the same power if not a greater power to capture men's imaginations! To that goal he was firmly committed. As his many speeches on the subject demonstrate. Now, people, when they see a President or anyone wanting something very strongly, they tend to think they can charge more than they otherwise might. Car dealers call it the 'wanting it tax'. JFK was no fool! He knew that vendors would try to talk up the price of achieving the goals he had set for the nation. To that end, he invited the most powerful vendors to a personal meeting and gave them a spanking. This is not a policy document sir, it is what a chief executive does when he knows people he needs to get a job done are holding him up and attempting to rob him. That's what this document is. Your interpretation that suggests the negative statements of JFK reflected
his general policies is wrong. It ignore the many speeches and letters and writings at the time showing his firm commitment to developing space travel in a way that captured all people's imagination so they could turn away from war, and toward peace.


You really don't allow reality to intrude, do you?


This scared people who derive their power from manipulation of fear. That's why they organized to kill this president and make it clear to subsequent presidents their ability to act is extremely limited.


I left the MookLunacy in just this one time so that people could see
what sort of delusional whacko conspiracy theory ****e Mookie
believes.


Skylab proves that! Skylab got done for less than $2 billion in 18 months because of this fact!

Using surplus hardware from canceled lunar missions. Not a fair
accounting at all.

Sunk costs are sunk costs. Your ability to properly account for things is less than your ability to properly engineer things or manage rapacious contractors.

The point you keep missing is that for far less than the $196 billion cost of Shuttle the USA could have had

(1) a fly back Saturn,
(2) a nuclear upper stage,
(3) a nuclear power plant for lunar and mars missions and bases
(4) a wet station S-IVB and S-II for missions and bases
(5) Fly by Mars & Venus
(6) Explore Mars and NEO Asteroids
(7) Land on Mars

Before April 12, 1981 - the date of the first space shuttle flight.


And we could do all this for that little because Mookie's head is full
of magic pixie dust.



The S-IVB could have landed a cryogenic Service Command
module on the lunar surface, and then be used as a lunar
base for up to five men and women for up to 90 days on
the moon. Replacing the J2 engines with bimodal NERVA
type engines would have extended the base time and
improved payloads and range.

A delusional fantasy

You're the one who is deluded. Again, the Skylab was ready, and the costs sunk for it, BECAUSE NASA was doing these things.


You REALLY need to go look at what Skylab was...


*not* based in the political reality of beating the
Soviets.

LBJ pushed the beating the Soviets angle in 1964. Prior to JFK being shot down in Dallas by the CIA the goal of the space program was to join with the Soviets in the great new adventure space represented to all humanity, and in this way avoid nuclear conflict.


Utter horse**** based on nothing and contrary to everything JFK said.

snip MookLunacy

--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine


NASA spent over $209 billion on the Space Shuttle program in current dollars and $145 billion in current dollars on the Apollo Lunar Program. Had the USA spent $209 billion in a CONTINUATION of the Apollo program, we would have had a base on the moon and manned landing on Mars by 1990 and very likely a global wireless hotspot provided by a network of connected communications satellites along with solar power satellites in orbit around Earth.

On Friday, July 3, 2015 at 4:36:56 AM UTC+12, Fred J. McCall wrote:
Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

On Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 11:03:36 PM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:

and a
hypersonic air breather is complex indeed.

Only because it's details are highly classified.

Sheez.

Black programs are of no use to a sci.space discussion, yet you keep
trotting them out. You should be posting to a military newsgroup
instead.


At which point he would be laughed out of the newsgroup.

--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine

We should discuss space policy based on best available technology, whether it is currently classified or not.