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It may have been worthwhile to finish the X-33, but the spaceplane was not going to scale up into a full size SSTO. The largest single failure was the rupture of the X-33's composite hydrogen tanks. Once the aluminum-lithium tanks were substituted, most people gave up hope for building an SSTO. And I believe that NASA messed up by not sponsoring an upgraded DC-X (even the more modest DC-XB or DC-XC, if McDonnell Douglas's competing X-33 couldn't be funded) in addition to Lockheed's X-33. Engineering history has proven that a single solution is rarely the answer to any need.
I predict that the economy will begin to improve in about a year or so. Some of the stock market problems have to do with the deflation of stock prices that were trumped up by poor accounting during the previous boom. A lot of the trouble comes from the oil market, which has been artificially inflated by the war talk about Iraq. Once the Iraq situation ends and oil prices return to normal levels, things will come around.
"I'm not much of a 'hands-on' evil scientist."--Dr. Evil, "Goldmember"
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I find it rather funny that Bush Sr. and Cheney, who as republicans, are touted as champions of the defense industry, actually killed the industry, except for a very brief period during the Gulf War.
This is close to home, because Grumman was founded a few miles from my house, and 35,000 people lost their jobs directly in that plant as a result of cheney cancelling contracts that the company was promised.
the war on iraq will do very little for the defense industry. the aerospace industry will die if we dont move it into space. All our defense industry does now is make spare parts, but very little new hardware. we build about 10-20 new combat planes a year, and thats a high estimate.
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