Privately funded space flight?

[BlueStreak]

Yes, but have you flown to the moon in your Admiral?

Dave

[piece-itpete]

Lol!

I hope someone can get up there. We need a beatup old simple longbed pickup, with a straight six, manual windows and a vent door, not the station wagon Ferrari we've been using.

Pete

[Combwork]

Originally Posted by BlueStreak

Ummmmmm.....

Looks like "government money" put man into space almost fifty years ahead.
So, I don't know what you're waiting for.

Dave

The governments proved it could be done, but at a hideous cost. Recent advances in technology plus a bit of lateral thinking seem to have brought the costs down. Why don't I do it? How many firework rockets tied together would it take to get a man off the ground?

[BlueStreak]

Originally Posted by Combwork

The governments proved it could be done, but at a hideous cost. Recent advances in technology plus a bit of lateral thinking seem to have brought the costs down. Why don't I do it? How many firework rockets tied together would it take to get a man off the ground?

Your OP sounded like you were waiting for government to catch up. To who? Been there, done that. Waiting for private industry to catch up. See?

Dave

[Combwork]

Originally Posted by BlueStreak

Your OP sounded like you were waiting for government to catch up. To who? Been there, done that. Waiting for private industry to catch up. See?

Dave

I'm not waiting for private industry to catch up. "Richard Branson's craft won't go as high as the Space Shuttle, but like the Shuttle it's designed to be re-usable" makes it clear that the Shuttle was there first. The idea of a rocket being launched from a mother ship goes right back to the X15 so there's nothing new there either.

There's a problem with logical progression; what you make now based on and influenced by what was done previously doesn't encourage 'blue sky' thinking. A much smaller company with a "how can we do this" rather than "how can we improve this" attitude might achieve something that the bigger company misses.

[finnbow]

We've spent too much on reusable space vehicles (i.e., the Space Shuttle) at the expense of allowing our rocket launch capabilities to suffer. Let Branson stroke his own ego while we reestablish a reliable (and much cheaper) rocket launch capability.

[piece-itpete]

I picked up somewhere, it was actually cheaper to forget the external fuel tanks on the Shuttle. Retrieving/reusing them was for the publicity.

The Shuttle is just so much cooler than a standup rocket though

Pete

[merrylander]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

I picked up somewhere, it was actually cheaper to forget the external fuel tanks on the Shuttle. Retrieving/reusing them was for the publicity.

The Shuttle is just so much cooler than a standup rocket though

Pete

Also avoids being charged with littering.