Re: Could Falcon 9 compete with the Stick?


Rand Simberg wrote:
>
> >> It's really, really illogical to attempt to draw from the Shuttle
> >> failure the general conclusion that reusables can't be built. I
> >> remain amused at the people who attempt it nonetheless. I remain
> >> dismayed that such people are actually dictating space policy.
> >
> >I certainly don't draw the conclusion that reusables can't be
> >built--they emphatically can be. What the shuttle teaches is not that
> >reusables cannot be built but that the GOVERNMENT cannot build a
> >sustainable industry of any type, and the more technological the
> >industry is, the more this is true.
>
> Who said the GOVERNMENT should do it?

You did. you wrote this above right?

> >> Throwing billions of dollars away" on hardware development?
> >>
> >> Have you ever heard of the concept of "investment"?
> >>
> >>
> >> Why is it OK to "throw billions of dollars away" on developing new
> >> expendables (which is what NASA proposes), but not on space
> >> transports
> >> that might actually reduce marginal costs?

If that was not intended as an endorsement of government money spent a
particular way then you need to learn the English language.

The entire tenor of your commentary has been a criticism of the method
NASA currently envisions to accomplish the VSE because you claim that
money could be better spent developing cheaper space access.

Fine idea, yet you never deign to propose a model or specific plan or
even the skeleton of an idea for accomplishing this. Someone who
constantly says they know the way 'x' is being done is wrong, but never
states an alternative to 'x' is one of two things: he is a) Nixon with
a 'secret plan' to win the war in Vietnam by losing it or b) a pundit
with opionions coming out of his ears but no plans. Pundit is a new
word for what Teddy Roosevelt called a 'critic'.

It is not the critic who counts.

Tom

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