[FPSPACE] It's Happening....Aviation Week reports NASA budget

[Mark Wade]

> Why not just slash it to three, and find the original blue lines for
Apollo?

Actually Apollo could accomodate five in an emergency. Why not indeed (since
they've now eliminated land landing and decided to use the Apollo heat
shield material again anyway)? Or just license Shenzhou production in the
USA...

>There are even suggestions by Aerospace Corp to maneuver the capsule to
>Delta or Atlas rockets for the preferred launchers as well..rather than the
>Ares rocket.

Thank god, that's the first logical decision made since the whole
Constellation program was hijacked by Griffin. Hopefully the SRB-powered
death traps can finally be abandoned. All industrial contractors recommended
capsules launched by EELV's. It was only Congress, NASA, and its existing
industrial team that have persisted in perpetuating the most expensive and
dangerous launch system ever devised...

>Why waste all of this reinventing the wheel stuff?  Saturn V/Apollo..just
>update them.. Or is that entire Corporate Memory all gone now?

Yes, gone for good -- not just in space engineering, but aviation
engineering in general. Thanks to the infamous Perry meeting in 1993, the
aerospace industry was essentially nationalized. Maybe the only hope is to
change the existing factories into government arsenals and adopt the Soviet
design bureau system -- let small design companies build lots of prototypes,
then let the government build them....
IMHO...

-- 
Mark Wade
Encyclopedia Astronautica
http://www.astronautix.com/
astronautix at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.friends-partners.org/pipermail/fpspace/attachments/20090505/645c731c/attachment.html