Re: Could Falcon 9 compete with the Stick?

On 18 Sep 2005 09:12:57 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
<edkyle99@xxxxxxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

>lou@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>> You can't argue
>> that it's impossible by noting that it has not been done - it's quite
>> possible that no-one has seriously tried.
>
>Off the top of my head, I can think of a few
>who have quite seriously tried.
>
>Orbital Sciences Inc.
>Space Services International
>GCH Inc.
>ARC Technology
>Starstruck
>American Rocket Company
>Pacific American Launch Services
>Beal Aerospace
>Rotary Rocket Corp.
>Kistler Aerspace
>SpaceX Corporation
>EPrime
>SpaceDev
>Microcosm
>
>There were others.

Some of those are present tense, not past (SpaceX, SpaceDev,
Microcosm, Kistler) and the jury remains out. Most of the rest never
received adequate funding, so the failure remains one of funding, not
of intrinsic technical difficulty. What they "seriously tried" to do
was raise money, not build cheap launch systems. For the most part,
they failed, at least in raising enough to complete the projects. We
still don't know what the result would be if they were adequately
funded. We do, however, know what the result is when NASA is...
.

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