Posted on 06/20/2004 6:06:19 PM PDT by KevinDavis
The Left is wasting their breath bashing private space travel. Rutan just proved that tax money isn't needed to fund such adventures, and they can't ban launches made from over the high seas...an area that the White Knight can easily fly to before dropping a spaceship for a launch from 50,000 feet. The space genie is now out of the bottle. Even the mighty Left can't legislate it back.
No kidding, I had the impression that Rutan was more of a libertarian, npr lefty. That is great, he's a good one to have on our side
Are you an EZ owner?
According to Paul Harvey this morning, NASA is impressed enough with the results of the X-prize that they are talking about funding similar prizes and letting private industry fight it out.
I think it might have been Dr. Robert Zubrin who pushed idea on his onw, and insuto resource based Mars missions. Looks like he's won two now.
I think the Left hates and fears private spaceflight precisely because the more progress it makes, the harder it is to regulate and control.
Taken to its logical extreme, centuries in the future, distant space communities will likely be almost immune to centralized regulation of any kind.
There is also the matter of resource allocation as a rationale for tight control, the Left's reason for being. The Left thrives in an environment of scarce resources, limited opportunity, and (quite literally) closed frontiers. True, meaning profitable, expansion into space completely destroys this rationale.
Thanks for the update on the fate of the Starship. Sad to learn that there is only one flying. Back in the day, Beechcraft ran some slick ads in The Wall Street Journal linking the Starship's heritage to the Staggerwing of an earlier era.
Thanks, and yeah, I'll be there at OSH. Wouldn't miss it!
I usually get there a couple days early. This year I might be a little late because I have to attend at least session of the Vietnam Myths conference in Boston (I promised Steve Sherman) which is the same week.
http://viet-myts.com/
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Libertarian probably fairly describes him, but a right libertarian, not a left one.
He also has a tendency to "join a minority group." For instance, he uses all kinds of computers but still favour Macs. In fact, the primary data display in his Boomerang is (or was, he's always futzing with it) a Mac laptop. His son did the computer programmming -- quite the whiz, as bright as Dad in a different field.
Are you an EZ owner?
Naw. I love them but they have one achilles' heel, short fields. Although some guy landed one in a tiny parking lot in Chicago once... at night... deadstick... and stopped it in about 150 feet. I couldn't duplicate that feat, unless maybe I was loaded with the adrenaline he had that night.
I also want a gyro to play with, but can't decide if I want the innovative open-frame Monarch or the safety-oriented two-place Sparrowhawk. Both are great machines made by great guys. Right now, no medical (temporarily) so I ain't flyin' nothin'.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I'd looked at long-Ez's also. Great airplane, but they seem a bit spooky on less then 2500 ft strips. My local airport is 1900 ft and a cliff.
I hear you on the medical. My dad has to fight for his after having an angioplasty and cancer, my mother just had an aneurysm. There days in aviation may be numbered...unless the sport pilot thing goes through.
His best idea was to conduct a manned Mars landing to finally end terrorism.
You will have seen nothing until the battle over private property rights gets going. That's always been the stopper to space development once technology got beyond a certain point. Licenses and permits from innumerable agencies to even leave the ground are child's play in comparison.
OK, so it's a much repeated urban myth. Seriously, David Clary tried to find any source for that statement, and came up dry. The similarities between the V-2 and Goddard's liquid-fueled rockets were pretty much the similarities that come when you give a guy a clean sheet of paper and tell him to design a liquid-fueled rocket. Certain requirements are inherent in the concept.
There are a lot of differences, also; Goddard never conceived the turbopump which was a key to both V2 and Walter rocket engines. And while Goddard was a doughty experimenter, he failed a lot more than he succeeded. (Of course, like any scientist, he learnt a lot from the failures). he also operated on a relative shoestring, working alone or with a handful of assistants, whereas Dornberger and von Braun had an entire wartime economy at their disposal -- but by 1944 they had gotten the machine to a pretty practical point.
Another reason the Germans didn't have Goddard's stuff is that he was always paranoid about them taking an idea of his and beating him to the claim of first (whatever). So he was an obsessive journal writer, and Clary used these journals in his book.
The final proof is that in design and in propellants used, the German rockets do not closely resemble Goddard's work.
I strongly recommend Clary's book to anyone interested in Goddard:
If you search Amazon for Goddard, they also have his famous paper, "A method of reaching extreme altitudes," along with a 1936 paper on liquid propellants, in a book called "Rocket." These are highly technical papers for a reader fluent in physics and mathematics, but for $10 you can't go wrong. ("Rocket Man" is also about $8 cheaper there that what it cost me. Oh, well, no one said science was painless).
I wish Tsiolkovsky's stuff was in print. The New England Air Museum has a copy of several of his books that came from Igor Sikorsky's library!
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Not a bad idea. I still think their magic rock needs to be sent back on it's cosmic journey that our gravitational field so rudely interrupted. That'll give many generations something to ponder.
ROFL. A Space Groupie.
yes, just like the 60s....
hope the pilot didnt have any diecast spaceshipones in his pocket!
Perhaps the original design of the prescott pusher had some faults, but it is definately not a POS. My father built one and after 100 or so modifications, the plane is amazing and a blast to fly in. I just think that it is rude to say that something is a POS when there are GREAT versions out there!
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