NASA is a huge waste of tens of billions of dollars of our money. What NASA really needs to do is to abandon manned flight, further develop their unmanned, computer or remote controlled flight capabilities, and perhaps some low-level basic research on materials science, revolutionary rocket engines, and perhaps a maglev rail-gun type launch. Humans in space is a tremendous waste of our resources given our current technology, not to mention an unjustifiable risk of human life.
Anyway, here is an article that discusses a lot of practical issues and explains why a winged rocket is such a bad idea. *** http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03zj1.html Excerpt: Once again, NASA has proposed to develop a replacement for the troubled Space Shuttle. This year's project goes by the ungrammatical moniker "Orbital Space Plane". An interim version of OSP called the CRV (Crew Rescue Vehicle) to be developed by 2010 will take over the International Space Station lifeboat task now done by Soyuz. An improved OSP called the CTV (Crew Transfer Vehicle) will assume the ISS crew exchange task now done by Shuttle in 2012. To minimize development costs, the OSP will be launched on one of the new EELV family of expendable boosters, Delta 4 or Atlas V. Sound familiar? It should. The OSP is only the latest of many "Shuttle replacement" programs that have all failed dismally. A close look at OSP shows that this program is also doomed to failure due to fundamental technical defects. It's no surprise that such usually reliable NASA boosters as "Space Coast" Congressman Dave Weldon and aerospace lobbyist Lori Garver have publicly attacked OSP. *** -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
