Re: Griffin on Loss of U.S. Space Leadership

On 18 Feb 2006 11:50:59 -0800, in a place far, far away, "Stephen
Horgan" <stephen@xxxxxxxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

While manned spaceflight has been dominated by NASA, launch to orbit
now has a fair number of participants.

All of whom are pretty much satisfied with the status quo.

That may indeed be the case. Fortunately, others are more serious
about space--we don't have to rely on NASA.

The ESA is certainly catching up fast.

Not really.

The Chinese then?

No. No government is, or likely will.

I think the increase in purely private investment in space is a very
good thing, but improving access to space is still likely to be a
incremental process over a long period.

It will be incremental, but it won't be over that long a period, now
that they've gotten going.

The basic engineering problems
remain for SSTO models, and absent some radical new technology they are
tough ones.

Neither SSTO, or radical new technology is required to get much lower
launch costs than at present.
.

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