House Subcommitte Meeting on Future Markets in Space(Apr 05)

From Sigurds recently posted article below (I've been away from my PC for a week and only just seen the article) it seems that at last the FAA have granted Scaled the right to work with Virgin, I wonder how long it will be before we see the first designs of SS2? We might have already seen something if the ITAR rules hadn't delayed everything, I guess we should be grateful that the delay wasn't longer. Perhaps this will encourage other backers to come forward for other teams.

http://www.xprizenews.org/index.php?cat=23

If remember right Virgin said recently that the vehicles will be shown in the public in 2006 - may be late 2006.

By the way - I am working to apply the theoretical explanations about regulation to this thread. I am going to try to look to the recent progresses while doing so.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Still busy with other space-related topics I coudn't do yet what will be positive for this thread.

But just this moment I read an article interesting for this thread. The article "The New Age of Space Advocacy: Enter the Professionals
" ( www.space.com/adastra/adastra_advocacy_prof_060525.html ) says [quote]Perhaps the most important advantage of self-regulation is that it avoids government-imposed regulations which, as Burt Rutan noted at ISDC, can often be written by people who know nothing about the space business. As Rutan put it, “Government needs to know what to allow.â€

I heard over at New Mars that Newt Gingritch wants to nix VSE and replace it with with NASA giving money away to start ups.

There is a big problem with this.

To start off with--the reason the Soviets failed at the moon attempt was due to competition between Design Bureax which reduced already limited (compared to Apollo) funds. So if you take NASA's already overdivided budget--you won't have anything but the same list of Goldin era failures like X-33, X-34, etc.--only the names will be different.

When Kololov and Glushko worked together on R-7--the big gov't-big rocket model worked just fine--that is why R-7 is to be used in Kourou. No one will be using SS1 to launch anything. Apollo showed us that big NASA projects can work. Glushko was able to get RD-170 going and after Korolov died, Glushko was able to be a strong man--as Griffin is trying to be. That is why Zenit was able to fly.

If the start-ups believe NASA is wrong headed and that gov't can't do spaceflight--then why do they want NASA handouts? Let them prove on their own how private initiatives are better--and leave my tax dollars alone--and in the hands of real engineers like Mike Griffin--and not frauds like Newt Gingrich.

I was reminded recently that “Big Dumb Boostersâ€

Funding woes:
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Fundi ... s_999.html
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Weldo ... m_999.html
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Mikul ... m_999.html