Re: top ten reasons there'll be faster progress

"Jordan" <JSBassior2001@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

And there are applications for
suborbital rockets at all those ranges, including tourist, passenger,
and courier service for the longer-ranged ones.

Yep. And for 40+ years, those large and well-understood markets for
point-to-point terrestrial transport have not found enough demand for
supersonic (still less hypersonic) flight to pay for the technology
development needed to bring it to economic maturity and widespread
use.

Even in the less ROI-bound arena of military aviation, when it comes
to payload transport (as distinct from recon or dogfighting), air
forces have consistently chosen various combinations of STOL, range,
stealth, and general cost-effectiveness over greater speed.

So that rather large techno/economic hump to be gotten over (the one
that neither all the world's paying air cargos, nor all the world's
civilian passengers, nor all the world's military airlift demands, has
surmounted for decades) is going to yield to... space tourism?

My, my.


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