The early Atlas rocket is an expendable SSTO by some definitions. It is a “stage-and-a-half” rocket, jettisoning two of its three engines during ascent but retaining its fuel tanks and other structural elements. However, by modern standards the engines ran at low pressure and thus not particularly high specific impulse and were not especially lightweight; using engines operating with a higher specific impulse would have eliminated the need to drop engines in the first place.

The first stage of the Titan II had the mass ratio required for single-stage-to-orbit capability with a small payload. A rocket stage is not a complete launch vehicle, but this demonstrates that an expendable SSTO was probably achievable with 1962 technology.

You could consider educating yourself, if you weren’t ineducable.

Terminate government-funded manned spaceflight and most of the country wouldn’t even notice. That’s the basic problem with what the government is doing in manned spaceflight.

“The People” is also right about the “E” word. Like the “N” word (nuclear) and “single-stage-to-orbit” it will soon be a discredited concept. Which is unfortunate.

Any POTUS who terminated human spaceflight would take a huge political hit and even “extreme” lefty sites such as Daily Kos have a great many human spaceflight enthusiasts.

I participated in the SEA lobbying event and out of 14 visits to 14 different offices, 14 staffers told me that their boss was firmly committed to NOT slash NASA’s funding. Obtaining more money would be tough, especially when the President expressed a firm position that his ~$17.6 billion proposal not be exceeded but ending NASA? No way will that happen.

In my visits, Democrats were more supportive of modest increases (add a billion or two to the $17.6 billion) than Republicans and leading Democrats have been saying for years that NASA has not been getting enough money to fulfill its mandates.

Obama’s background is not one where NASA support would come naturally however he is a very smart politician and the benefits to him of terminating American spaceflight would be greatly outweighed by the political damage he would suffer.

The ProSpace March Storm will be promoting Space Solar Power (SSP)
http://www.prospace.org/files/Ms2008SSPp1-2V3.pdf

If you want to take specific action to promote & support SSP, you can sign up here:
http://www.prospace.org/?q=node/9.

– SSP Fan

You couldn’t be more right about this. In two years, “Exploration” will be referred to as the “E” word.

General Custer said the very same thing.

There are a lot of very angy voters out there that are going to overrun your’s and Michael Griffin’s positions as if you weren’t even there. You’re irrelevant.

Why I read these forums in the first place has nothing to do with convincing people in these forums. If a few are convinced or have their minds opened up a little that’s great but it’s not my objective. I’ve had my mind opened up as well and you really never understand a problem until you can switch ‘sides’ if you will and debate the merits of each solution to that problem convincingly.

My objective is to first understand all the myriad of view points, issues, ideas etc out there in an attempt to find some thread that will bind all the good/compatible ideas together into a cohesive effort that works with the limits of politics, engineering and budget.

The second objective is to put into a public forum alternative approaches and field the counter arguments to see where the holes in logic may be so we can fix them before prime time. You play like you train.

An additional side benefit is that there are number of powerful/knowledgeable people in these blogs that have been able to contact us anonymously, direct email, phone and then face to face that have been indispensable in helping to steer us around the rocks.

Prime time is in the process of happening right now and we have the benefit of the collective wisdom and viewpoint at this point of hundreds of subject matter experts for all fields critical to pulling this off.

What we are doing behind the scenes is the implementing the process that should have happened but didn’t because Mike already had the solution and didn’t want any new ideas or counter arguments to his approach. The fact that he now has a huge bubble around him nearly impervious to the truth about the serious problems with the current approach or new ideas that may solve these problems is why we are on this train head for a cliff right now.

The sooner we can get off this train and circle the wagons before the upcoming political shift the better.

I had no intention of implying that space engineer (sic) didn’t matter in issues of space politics; certainly I tried to make the criticality of this connection perfectly clear in my recent essay with which you indicated your agreement.

My point is about wasted energy & effort; just because it makes people feel good to lob jabs at one another (or push their own architecture ideas ad nauseum) here in the space blogs doesn’t mean we’re advancing toward achieving our collective goal to see further exploration and exploitation of the greater solar system.

All the back and forth here over these issues reminds me of the political arguments I had with my friends during my first year in college: we never got any closer to convincing each other of our positions, and all we had to show for it was lost sleep.

If one believes that the architecture NASA is currently pursuing is wrong for achieving the goals of the VSE, how does arguing about it here with people who remain unconvinced achieve any good? If DIRECT (or any other architecture) is supported by such a compelling politico-engineering case, why aren’t their relative merits being debated in the halls of power? What lobbying (or other) techniques will best enable such debates (and others) to take place in forums where they will count for more than useless emotional venting?

Which gets back to my question that no one has offered to answer yet: Is there any MEASURABLE data that indicates that blitzing the Hill accomplishes anything positive for space exploration? What about e-mailing (with attached descriptions of architectures as desired)…to whom? Hand-written letters versus typed ones? Phone calls? Staged demonstrations or rallies on the Capitol steps?

If we don’t ascertain the most effective means of pursuing our agenda(s) with tools that pack the most leverage and then employ them, all the electrons exchanged here and elsewhere won’t amount to much at all. I tip my hat to Jon Benac and his actionforspace; it’s a start. But is it the best start? What does the data (if any) show? And if there IS no data, perhaps we should start defining some so that our feedback control loops (there’s some engineering for you) serve to create measurable progress instead of mere heat.

While these get out the support/vote efforts are nice they are pretty much either preaching to the converted or unconvincing to those who could care less. Yes believe it or not most people could give a flip about space exploration. Outside of a Sputnik moment like the Chinese dragging the Apollo-11 flag back and replace it with theirs I really don’t see how this dynamic significantly changes in the foreseeable future.

Where we are messing up right now is that the people who do care and that should know better are wasting the resources (or protecting those that do i.e. “hope for the best” – Buzz Aldrin) we do get from the political process. A political process that will continue to provide the resources we already get due largely from NASA district/Contractor iron rice bowl politics 101. We the converted (collectively) only have ourselves to blame for the gross inefficiency of our current approach at implementing one of the best space policies since the Space Age began.

As far as I’m concerned our elected representatives finally did their part and got us out the LEO forever space policy rut of the last thirty years with a super majority bipartisan VSE authorization. Yes, we would all like more public support and the money that goes with it, who wouldn’t? Frankly with more money right now we would only be able to prove beyond all doubt how bad the current approach is that much quicker.

What we need is an engineering solution that acknowledges our budget limitations in concert with the political importance of not hacking up the very workforce, hardware, integration and launch infrastructure we need to get us out of LEO in the first place.

Engineering success and political support are not decoupled but serve to aid one another.

Our elected representatives did their job in the VSE authorization and I’m sure they will keep trying to get more money but we (engineers) need to a better job as well.

There Bob does that provide a context as to why space engineer matters when it comes to space politics?