New Mars Forums

So let's show some appreciation and start up a webpage supporting Mike Griffin? Lots of Signatures.

Friedman and Tumlinson have their mouthpieces--I say we turn this site into a couter against the idiots like Cowing, Tumlinson Jeff Bell, etc.

Who's with me?

I'll split the difference. Farming is best done by private companies--but spaceflight is best done by gov'ts who understand infrastructure. A lot of cyberlibertarians get their electrical power from TVA after all.

My problem is that both the Left and the Right have gone anti-industry due to the influence of Greens on one side and outsourcers on the other.

With tax-breaks against illegals voting themselves more of someone elses money--the best and brightest go wanting.

ironically--if an alt.spacer were to defect to the DPRK--he would never have to beg for funding ever again. Yes, he is just as apt to get shot at any time.

Then too--if he asks for a roll of steel--he gets it. He might have the power of a chief designer if he has Kim's favor.

We saw Gerald Bull get ignored by both the DNC and GOP--and he went to Iraq.

Who knows--a space start up might head for North Korea.

Now that's a chilling thought--and one more reason technocrats need to run the USA for awhile--and not Greens on one side and Blue-bloods on the other.

I have no problems with the crew riding Ares V.

Their big investor walked out on them. That is the number one failing of the alt.spacers:

--the questionable nature of the bored rich; like that tax cheat Anderson for one.

Spaceflight is too important to be left up to the whim of the Bransons.

Very well said. Those engines have been sitting around an awfully long time, too.

What?

You have to understand that Marshall has been poisoned by the Goldin age, where the fans of big rockets like Bill Eoff were considered personal non grata--with the X-33 frauds running the show. If you believed in big, simple rockets--you weren't welcome. We are still picking up the pieces--and the MSFC bashers are exploiting it.

150 tons from the surface. It would be nice.

Probably so. Some ATK basher that couldn't foist the EELV albatross on Griffins neck.

It may be that the only way to get space funded is with a project that can serve both--say an LNG carrier with a reactor to get free hydrogen and oxygen for propellant and sell more as a way to sustain spaceflight.

If you want to get humanity into space big time--you cannot use space as an actuall money maker at first. Sell fuel for a profit and put that money--and your free fuel--into big LVs

A state sponsored hydrogen-filled LNG carrier with a reactor might need more room. Large tubular barges in the shape of the Neptune Spar, perhaps...

I agree. The author of the Sci Am article are probably anti-human spaceflight hacks doing their dirt with their chosen facts.

I wonder if beamed energy propulsion might be a good fit with an Airship to Orbit concept. First to power ion wind and then to push it up.

I might launch the ATO bigelow fashion atop Ares and coat it with  some UV material to give it a super thin shell.

it my be that Leiks craft is the only way to us beamed energy.

Frankly--its best to just stick with big rockets.