From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Mon Jun 02 2003 - 22:35:49 MDT
(Please disregard my prior email on this thread; my
ISP
decided not to inform me of the other emails saying
what I said until after I'd sent it.)
--- Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
> 1) I believe the end of the Apollo project was due
> only to the lack of
> national compettiton from the USSR. Once the space
> race was won, public interest all
> but vanished.
Public interest in the national goal, perhaps, but not
at personal levels. "Okay, the U.S.A. has been to the
Moon. Now, when do *I* get to go? Never? Forget
that."
> 2) All these aerospace engineers are as good at
> economic estimates as I
> am-which is to say-negative.
The more serious ones have hired financial advisers
who aren't quite so poor at this. A number of them
think the engineers are being too conservative.
> So what is my answer? Breakthroughs, in engineering,
> materials science,
> chemical engineering, biological apps. Fund these,
> and commerical space travel and
> habitation will follow. Let the be underfunded, and
> we as a species will wait
> the decades it will take to achieve these advances,
> that comes from scientific
> pursuits, in the typical hap-hazzard way.
Actually, the necessary breakthroughs - in avionics,
rocket fuels, materials, and so forth - have been made
over the past few decades, albeit mostly in slow
evolutionary fashion rather than point breakthroughs.
It's just that Big Aerospace sees more profit in
charging NASA more for yesterday's technology, and
NASA keeps justifying this logic. (One might almost
suspect the NASA managers were getting financial
kickbacks, if the psychology of beauracracies did not
provide a simpler explanation.)
Several smaller companies are now seeking to fill the
gap, though. Their biggest problem - at least, the
ones that are actually flying hardware (the rest are
flying dreams) - is funding, being smaller companies.
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