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#16 | |
still says videotape
Join Date: Feb 2001
Posts: 26,813
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If you would only recognize that life is hard, things would be so much easier for you. - Louis D. Brandeis |
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#17 |
2nd Covenant, yo
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Pugetropolis
Posts: 583
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I'd like to see NASA return to a small crew transport vehicle, like Apollo. Russia is/was able to put up several Soyuz to our one shuttle launch. If Rutan can help out, I'm all for it. The Vari-Eze is what I remember Rutan for.
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The party's over ... the drink ... and the luck ... ran out. |
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#18 | |
Look who thinks he's clever Dan.
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Washington DC Metro Area. Fairfax city
Posts: 226
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The $10 mill is the X Prize wich will be awarded to the first privately funded team to reach that height. and They have to do it twice so making it reuseable would be key. " The X Prize backers are gambling that their $10million carrot will inspire free-thinking, fast-moving, risk-taking entreprenures to creat a shuttle equivalent for the masses."(Popsci) The award was announced in 1996 and runs out in 2004. <i>------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No i'm not that smart i just read alot, specificaly <a href="http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviation/article/0,12543,444888,00.html">Popular Science</a>.</i> |
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#19 | |
The future is unwritten
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 71,105
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The descent of man ~ Nixon, Friedman, Reagan, Trump. |
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#20 | |
Neophyte-in-training
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Washington, D.C.
Posts: 3
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Of course, they did blow through over a billion dollars on the X-33 and X-34 reusable launch vehicles, which were never completed and never will be. Read about the $10M X-Prize and its real purpose at http://www.xprize.org/ Private enterprise is the true fountain of innovation. argonaut |
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#21 | |
Read? I only know how to write.
Join Date: Jan 2001
Posts: 11,933
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NASA's problems are not based in NASA. They are directly traceable to government. So the many calls from White House that are suspected to have pushed for a Challenger launch for Reagan's "Teacher in Space" speech in the State of the Union address. Or function of a Space Station Freedom, also ill conceived by a White House more interested in image than in science. X-34 was necessary for that space station. But suddenly government was no longer interest in spending money now that the Cold War purpose of a Space Station was redundament. Even Space Shuttles had no productive purpose. Disposible vehicle technology was quashed by Reagan Administration that ordered all domestic launches to be put on Space Shuttle - even though that was stupid, technically naive, and expensive. So when Challenger exploded, the US inventory for launch vehicles was almost bare. Then a Titan exploded. Then the "always works every time" Delta exploded. NSA was said to be down to their last spy satellite because available launchers were zero. And if that were not enough reasons to point fingers at Reagan's White House - then there was a private company in TX trying to get into the low cost launcher business. Reagan administration put the death knell into that venture as well. Much of NASA problems are directly traceable to strategic objectives force upon it by political government officials who could not see science if it was put up their nose. In the meantime, a science project that had serious and necessary objective - Super Collider particle accelerator in TX - was trashed by the George Sr adminstration so that money could be put into a useless Freedom Space Station. And did we happen to mention Reagan's Hypersonic Airplane. At least when Kennedy directed this nation to great scientific accomplishments, he first made an effort to learn if it could be done. NASA is a victim of technically ignorant politicians whose legalized bribery is more important than the advancement of science. Science is what a properly directed NASA is suppose to be about - not political boondoogles and pork. 85% of all problems are directly traceable to top mangement. |
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#22 | ||||
Caste-Away
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Palo Alto
Posts: 48
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#23 | |
The future is unwritten
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 71,105
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The descent of man ~ Nixon, Friedman, Reagan, Trump. |
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#24 |
a real smartass
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Kirkland, WA
Posts: 1,121
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The Shuttle is hardly the epitomy of reusable. It costs such a tremendous amount of money to refurbish the Shuttle between launches that I've heard that it might actually be cheaper to use disposable capsules.
I have the feeling that NASA is a bureaucracy that is slowly being killed by Congress. Bizarre demands are set, pork barrel projects are demanded, and the cash flow is being constrained. NASA is being hollowed out until there is nothing left but crufty middle-management. |
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#25 |
off target
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Indy
Posts: 93
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Go with what works . . .
Give Jet Blue four or five billion and let them figure it out.
They'll probably go with a european design, but it will turn a profit and the astronauts will ride up in leather seats while watching movies on their own private screens. Archer |
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#26 | |
Neophyte-in-training
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Washington, D.C.
Posts: 3
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argonaut |
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