Re: Northrup Grumman - CEV Prime

From: Ed Kyle (edkyle99_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 11/28/04 

Date: 27 Nov 2004 22:02:49 -0800

Edward Wright wrote:
> "Ed Kyle" <edkyle99@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:<1101537386.174529.203210@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>...
>
> > >Musk's Falcon can launch a Gemini-class capsule.
> >
> > No it can't. The only flight-rated Falcon that SpaceX has
> > completed (and that it has not yet attempted to fly) is rated
> > to orbit less than 1/5th of the mass of a typical Gemini.
>
> I suggest you read the SpaceX web site.

I did. It says Falcon can do 660 kg to a 200 km orbit
from Canaveral. Gemini mass was 3850 kg. You do the
math.

> > There is talk of a bigger Falcon launcher, but I've seen no
> > assembled hardware. Have you?
>
> So, that means it will never be built? You have some very strange
> logic.

No. It means that it hasn't been built. Which means
that it might not ever be built. Do you believe
everything that a venture capitalist says will happen,
will happen?

> Do you think computers still cost millions of dollars because that's
> what UNIVAC cost?

Some basic advances in technology (transistors and
integrated circuits) allowed that to happen. No
similar breakthrough advances in rocketry's base
technology have occured.

> Let's see. Montgomery Wards went bankrupt. So, you must think all
> department stores will go bankrupt, right? Therefore, unless NASA
> builds a department store, all department store shopping in the US
> will come to an end?

You've been shopping again, haven't you? :)

> > The history of such private space program efforts is pretty
> > consistent and can be summed up in one word: Failure. Failure
> > on a scale that far outpaces NASA's failure rates.
>
> You must live in an alternative universe. When did private
> enterprise
> spend tens of billions of dollars trying to develop a Shuttle
> replacement, with nothing to show for it?

I don't know about "tens-of-billions", but regardless,
at least you're noting that it is NASA, not private
enterprise, that has a human orbital space launch
capability to begin with. Fourth generation too.
Private enterprise is on generation zero.

> Why is SpaceShip One a failure? Because it didn't confirm your
> preconceived notion that only governments can do it?
SpaceShipOne is not an orbital spacecraft.

 - Ed Kyle

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