Re: Support from the lurker

From: George William Herbert (gherbert_at_retro.com)
Date: 09/26/04 

Date: 26 Sep 2004 06:16:41 GMT

I am going to let most of your slander lie, however;

Christian Ramos <cramos49@yahoo.co.nz> wrote:
>>Cant do
>> anythin like real people like Burt Rutan.

>Interesting isnt it. A telling quote from George was he claim in email that
>all the companies were close to people such as him, except Scaled
>Composites.

The quote in question is from the last post I made in the
Mushroom thread, which I both posted and mailed.
Message-ID: <414f9b78$0$60638$a1866201@newsreader.dsl.net>

Unfortunately, Christian, everyone else on the group will
have read it and will know what I actually said, which was
that all the companies except Scaled Composites have
presented papers at conferences and let people know
what they're doing, and that enough leaked out of Scaled
that we had a good idea of what they were doing.

>That is, the company that was a success was the one that didnt
>leverage people such as him.

Scaled did leverage a number of people like me.
You just don't have any clue who I am and what
I represent.

Scaled used SpaceDev's rocket motor. SpaceDev was founded by Jim
Benson. Before Jim Benson was in the Aerospace industry, just a
businessman who wanted to do something fun with space, he showed
up at one of the Space Access conferences and was asking
questions. We had a nice long talk in the courtyard of the
old Safari Inn in Scottsdale. He asked how long it was going
to take for me to get my rocket company going with and without
significant outside investment. I was, in retrospect,
optimistic. He was pessimistic.

Jim has the independent drive and business sense to have
succeeded as well as anyone else doing startup work
in the industry. SpaceDev has flown satellites and
components; they have commercial and government launch
systems and components development contracts.

Jim is *exactly* the sort of people I enjoy knowing
and sometimes working with.

I don't work for, and never have worked for as an employee
or consultant, any Big Aerospace company or NASA, though I
have proposed and bid stuff.

>I'm sure if you go back you can find people
>such as him tut-tutting sub-orbital trajectories or hybrid motors yet are

I am not personally interested in the technical or business sense
in sub-orbital missions and business. I am interested in going
straight to orbit. I have never tut-tutted any of my friends and
aquaintences who are chasing that business and money.

I first met Peter Diamandis of X-prize fame at ISU in 1992
(Kitakyushu), where I was just about the only attendee to
pay my own way, and for some inexplicable reason he still remembers
my name and face. I have always thought it was a bright idea,
marred only by the difficulty of finding the prize money.
The trick with getting insurance to cover the other half
was a stroke of genius.

I first started playing with hybrid motors over 15 years ago...

>quite willing to jump on Burt's wagon. It's the classic old establishment
>versus the new. People like George fear the new, or change in general.

No part of that statement is true in any way.

What is wrong with you is that you are just wrong.

Rand is not a tool of the "Aerospace Establishment".
I am not either. I have been pushing innovative
space companies and putting in my own time and money
on them since the late 1980s. Change is everything
we've been working for.

You just don't get it. And apparently you don't want to.
There's a whole world here of people doing the innovation.
Openly. It's all documented and discussed. One report
by one foreign research firm is not enough information
for you to have any clue about what's going on.

-george william herbert
gherbert@retro.com

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