Griffith Parker just announced he’s switching party ID to the GOP…

ah another nut joins the team. Odd thing is that someone on the really far right announced that he wasn’t conservative enough!

As Obiewan would say …the politics of the force right now are very disturbed.

Robert G. Oler

He anounced his switch to the republican party today
ref link below:
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2009/12/raw_video_parker_griffith_anno.html

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2009/12/raw_video_parker_griffith_anno.html

“Marcel, I hope by the use of the word ‘help’ in your above post , you really mean ‘empower’.”

I think the government needs to get on with the job of developing simpler space vehicles that could be a viable asset to NASA, the US military, and to private industry so that more Americans, and humans in general, can get safer and cheaper access to orbit. It would save private industry billions of dollars in rocket development cost, the kind of money that private industry has been so far unwilling to pay!

Once such a SD-SSTOV, OTV, Light sails, and Lunar landers are developed, then private manufactures could sell them to NASA, the military, and to private US industries.

Of course, we could continue to wait around until private industry finally decides to appropriately fund their manned space programs. But if we had waited around for private industry to figure out a way how they could make a quick profit by developing and launching the first satellites, we’d probably still be waiting to place our first satellite into orbit.

Private industry has had more than 50 years to get into the manned space flight.

The radiation hazard on the Moon shouldn’t be difficult to deal with at all since all you have to do is bury your habitat structures under 5 meters of lunar regolith. Robots could probably do that even before the first humans arrive to live in lunar habitat modules.

Light sails are the key to manned interplanetary space travel, IMO, and the key towards the easy exploitation of small asteroids. Being able to capture and return small asteroids to Lagrange points via light sails should provide us with all of the oxygen, water, carbon, and mass shielding we need to survive in orbital space. The platinum resources of these asteroids could also be our first lucrative export from space to Earth.

What I have seen from my little NASA knot hole, is the payload costs must be commensurate with the rocket/launch costs. To wit, you would never but a $150 million spacecraft on an $150M launch vehicle. $800 M yes.

And you would never but a $800M payload on a $40M rocket.

And if Space X is successful in their Falcon 1 and Falcon 9’s, I believe NASA will adjust and you will see more smaller less costly missions…..and maybe the flight rate will go up.

Marcel, I hope by the use of the word ‘help’ in your above post , you really mean ‘empower’.

When government/NASA works with industry, as in the typical government contractor arrangement, what I usually see is the government ‘forcing’ the contractor to do it ‘the government way’.

Not a good recipe for innovation.

Government should set policy, and let commercial ventures knock their socks off chasing X prize money.

The Lincoln presidency saw the benefit to unifying the East and Western halves of the nation , and led the passage of laws that kicked off the Continental Railroad ‘race'; Private industry emerged, and made was paid per mile of completed track by the government. Private industry was thus ‘empowered’ . The government did not lay a single mile of track.

If this is what you really mean by ‘help’ private industry, I’m all for it. Anything else is interference.