Is it more dangerous then a nuclear fast attack sub cruising at 600 feet BSL? Is it more dangerous then climbing Mt. Everest? Is it more dangerous then taking a 45 foot sailboat from San Diego to Hawaii? Is it more dangerous then getting in a Boeing Stratoliner and flying from SFO to Hawaii in say 1952? A Marine doing street patrol in Fallujah in 2005? How about being a Naval Aviator doing night approaches to the pitching deck of a flattop with no Moon?”

“Yes, it is.”

The fatality rate for Everest climbs is 9.6%. If being an astronaut were equally dangerous then we would have had 12 loss-of-crew accidents in 132 shuttle flights rather than only 2 accidents. So being an astronaut is less dangerous than being an Everest climber.

So you think that is how the world works? That is exactly what you and your commercial crew scammers are doing. You think people are so stupid. All anyone has to do is read the threads to realize your team jumps on anyone who disagrees with destroying NASA HSF and putting it in the hands of “entrepreneurs.” You are Enron and Lehman brothers and and the florida lottery all rolled into one. America is going to lose our entire knowledge base because of your Reaganomic voodo BS. You are all criminals.

However, those that attack my points of view should back up their assertions with facts, otherwise they are just being argumentative. You can call me a liar, or a destroyer of NASA, but you better provide the facts that will convince me, otherwise I won’t engage you.

Agree 100%. I would deserve to be called a liar if I’m lying. But I go out of my way to back up my position with evidence. If I don’t know something — I’ve made it clear I have no engineering background — I state that and will often ask our resident engineers for the answer.

I was a political consultant back in California part-time since the late 1980s. Inevitably when someone has no facts to support his position, he stoops to smears and lies. In politics, you’ll see people with a lot of money burn through it to circulate those lies, hoping that if voters hear it often enough they’ll start to believe it.

So when I see our local politicians and labor leaders making up all sorts of stuff about Constellation and Obama’s proposal, it’s not hard to figure out why. They know that the current situation is unsustainable. So they smear and lie to support their agenda.

At this point, my personal shun list contains Gary Church, but now I’m adding amightywind and DCSCA.

I have those and Marcel F. Williams.

I have to wonder if some of those are actually the same person. There doesn’t appear to be any way to stop someone from using more than one name. Hopefully our host Jeff has the ability to look at I.P. addresses and figure out if someone is suffering from a multiple personality disorder.

* Un-shun *

I used the “Shun” thing on a different post for Gary Church – I got it from something that Dwight does on the TV show The Office. It seemed appropriate, since me announcing the use of it makes me look as silly as Dwight.

For me personally, I enjoy a good debate, and there are many times I have learned something from them. I do evolve my positions as I learn, and that has certainly happened with Constellation, Direct, and more.

I have a great love of aerospace and space related industries and research, and I feel that I am a great supporter of NASA. However there is more than one “right way” for us to do anything in space, and as long as a course of action will increase our capabilities in the long run, I will add my grumbling support.

Public discourse is certainly one of the tenets of our country, and of the Internet. One should not need to be an expert to voice their opinion of how they want their tax dollars spent, and passionate prose can be very convincing.

However, those that attack my points of view should back up their assertions with facts, otherwise they are just being argumentative. You can call me a liar, or a destroyer of NASA, but you better provide the facts that will convince me, otherwise I won’t engage you.

At this point, my personal shun list contains Gary Church, but now I’m adding amightywind and DCSCA. They certainly bring passion to the debate, but for them it’s not a two-way street, and I would rather spend my time in an intellectual discourse than a yelling match.

* Shun *

“Apparently you don’t either, as acceleration and resultant G-forces are a criteria for man rating a LV.”

And Atlas V, Delta IV and Falcon 9 all are within human rating G-force tolerances.

Ares I however needed an LAS system that subjected it’s crew to 16G’s of force when activated – 16G’s! It had to do that because the SRB can not be “turned off” like a liquid engine, and if the SRB has exploded, then there is lots of burning solid fuel scattering in all directions through the air, and the LAS has to try and get as far away as possible (no one knows if this is even possible to do).

Ditto. Well, we tried.

How do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you pen such nonsense?

Which is why I’ve added Marcel F. Williams to my personal “ignore” list, or the “shun” list as someone else called it.

If they can’t tell the truth, if they post lies and smears just to get attention for themselves, then they don’t deserve a response from us, much less the courtesy of reading their drivel. So I just scroll right past them.