Re: An opportunity for VMS


Dave Froble wrote:
AEF wrote:

Or we could just (finally) let the business that paid for licenses do it
and stop wasting taxpayer money.
What business? What licenses? Could you be a little more vague?
Vague? I merely mentioned old news. The US Government sold license to
operate commercial space operations (including launches) to major companies
decades ago. Martin Marietta got one of the first. But then the
govenrment never stepped out of the picture. Starting a new commercial

Hmmmm. The gov't built it. What should they do? Give it away? That
would be more wasted taxpayer dollars!

How about selling it? Recoup some of the money.

Depends on the consequences. Besides, it ain't gonna happen.


The International Space Station
-- now there's a waste of money!

It's a first step off the planet. Perhaps you don't feel we should
leave the planet? There are those with their fingernails still dug into
the cave walls. Myself, I feel that expanding off the planet is the
only protection against extinction. We're on the one and only, and all
it takes is the next large rock.

Someone at Sky and Telescope wrote an opinion piece about it being a
waste of money. We're talking 10's of billions of dollars here for lame
experiments. This piece said the superconducting supercollider would
have cost far less and done much better science. We're talking Sky and
Telescope here!!! Not Physics Today.

As for leaving the planet... 10's of billions just to orbit the earth?
Then going to Mars? Going to Mars is fraught with huge difficulties,
not the least of which is the danger of radiation to the crew. This
would be incredibly expensive and difficult to do.


venture is hard enough without having to compete with someone who is
subsidizing their operation by picking your potential customers pockets.
On a level playing field NASA would be defunct, the Shuttle would have been
replaced a decade ago (maybe even before the first disaster) and who knows,
we might already be on Mars.

NASA defunct? speculation.

They should be research, not operations.

No comment.


Shuttle replaced? Maybe, I don't know enough to judge.

The shuttle program is built by bureaucrats, in their image. The more
people needed, the better. The damn thing, as far as I know, cannot
even navigate itself. It needs a hugh ground crew. Thats where the
money goes.

Mars? Give me a break.

Where do you want it?

Where do I want what? The shuttle? On Mars?


The only response I can come up with is 'ground hugging mud lover'.

Fine, you pay for the mission to Mars. I'm all for space exploration,
but sending humans to Mars now is premature and too expensive.

Anyway, Bill's point was that if space travel were privatized, we might
be on Mars already. That's what I responded to when I said "Give me a
break!". You somehow changed that to my saying that we shouldn't go to
Mars. Well, we should, but not prematurely.


--
David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail: davef@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA 15486

AEF

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