Nothing at all, I’m merely against targeted government funding for it, because I believe launch vehicle decisions should be made by the market.

Extremely unproductive (almost idiotic) rhetoric. We (as in US) weill be at Ceres and Pluto by 2015, you know that right? We’re already there Martin.

For a handful of probes, yes. What I meant was something far more ambitious, to expand the Earth’s economic sphere to encompass the whole solar system. Say commercial manned spaceflight right up to the surface of Mars or maybe even Ceres or Vesta and commercial unmanned exploration well into the outer solar system. Which is what would / will happen at $100/kg.

to LEO.

Yes, to LEO. Which is halfway to anywhere else in the solar system.

Your ‘solar system’ mantra is complete nonsense, especially since you offer no concrete plans on how that ‘cheap lift’ is to become a reality.

I’ve done so several times, but maybe you weren’t paying attention. That’s your prerogative of course, but then you shouldn’t complain if you overlook the reply.

On the other hand, an AJ-500 on a three meter modular booster is just about as concrete and ‘not SpaceX’ as one can get, considering Soyuz 1.

Yes, very concrete, but I don’t see how that would lead to cheap lift or why it deserves targeted government funding, let alone an MSFC monopoly on such work. If that is what you’re proposing. But since I believe cheap lift should be the number one priority in the field of manned spaceflight I’ll be happy to listen to any details you may be willing to provide.

Not according to Korolev, Mishin, Chertok, or Kamanin. The number of engines on the N-1’s first stage does not appear in any of their statements as to why the N-1 suffered test launch failures or why the Soviets lost the Moon race:

http://www.astronautix.com/articles/whynrace.htm

Don’t make stuff up.

And for the third time, this still has nothing to do with Falcon 9. N-1 had 30 first-stage engines and massed over 6 million pounds. Falcon 9 has nine first-stage engines and masses less than a million pounds. It’s like comparing a watermelon to an apple.

Think before you post.

Ugh…

Ok, so far so good. So what do you have against a reengineered NK-33 (AJ26/500)?

With it we’ll have the entire solar system

Extremely unproductive (almost idiotic) rhetoric. We (as in US) weill be at Ceres and Pluto by 2015, you know that right? We’re already there Martin.

Nothing is more important than cheap lift

to LEO. Your ‘solar system’ mantra is complete nonsense, especially since you offer no concrete plans on how that ‘cheap lift’ is to become a reality. On the other hand, an AJ-500 on a three meter modular booster is just about as concrete and ‘not SpaceX’ as one can get, considering Soyuz 1.

“In our view, CEO Elon Musk may be similar to Steve Jobs in being a technology visionary also able to manage and create shareholder value.”

http://blogs.forbes.com/ericsavitz/2011/08/08/tesla-is-elon-the-next-steve-merrill-launches-with-buy/

I don’t know where you get the idea I disagree with that. I’ve said that to first order cheap lift aka low cost and reliable access to space is the only thing that matters. With it we’ll have the entire solar system, without it we’ll have paid joy-rides for a select group of government employees and perhaps Apollo on steroids at best. Nothing is more important than cheap lift.

That’s capsules and space planes. Great. However, all of these capsules and spaceplanes will still need primary propulsion and launch vehicles, and Atlas V and even Falcon 9 Heavy at $1000 to $5000 per lb (that’s pound not kilo) simply does not cut it for anything much different than we are already doing. You’re just not thinking far enough ahead or looking at the long term – that those Earth to LEO launch costs will not work for raw materials nobody wants. From my perspective everything is proceeding beyond my wildest expectations, except for the lost ten years and tens of billions of dollars, and the extreme cost of the shuttle and ISS and the continued fixation on SLS (Ares V) and MPCV (Orion). What I simply intend to do (and indeed, what I have done) is broaden the playing field far beyond SpaceX and ULA and into the realm of new (from the old) Russian propulsion and the vastly smaller, more affordable, modular and reusable launch vehicle architectures while opening a five year window in which second generation hydrocarbon engine reengineering, development and production can proceed with federal investment, to give the competition a chance to compete with SpaceX (who is already doing those things) on a level playing field, with multiple players. That’s exactly what you want, right? You can debate all you want the nuances of gas generator and pintle designs -as opposed to closed cycle, vacuum enhanced nozzles and the answers I have to all of those issues are – yes. Invest heavily and widely in propulsion and build small versions of the large rockets you eventually may want to fly, and fly often and unsafely, Wider is not better with this.

Anyone not fixated on Earth to LEO transportation is not fixed in reality, sorry, but that is the BLUNT TRUTH. Even the Russians get those basics. Certainly Mr. Musk ‘gets it’. Europeans should be excelling at this as well. The ‘opening up the solar system’ line is hopelessly naive, as it is several very large steps beyond the work we have yet to do to get to that point.

“That may or may not be true…”

In fact, it is true, per the Soviet’s themselves and their analysis of the failures. “Don’t make stuff up,” indeed. 1+1=2, not 11.

I’m not terribly interested in what ESA does as it is highly unlikely to have much synergy with commercial manned spaceflight. I’m more interested in CCDev.

As a space enthusiast however

Oh, I see, you’re a mere space ‘enthusiast’, who believes cheap LEO lift is the solution to all of our beyond earth orbit space exploration problems but are unable to discern the societal implications of space travel for the planet, nor even capable of recognizing the severity of planetary problems.

If that’s the case there isn’t much I can do for you other than to point out to you that’s not the way we do things anymore on this side of the ocean.

Good luck with your enthusiast space program over there.

You haven’t articulated a solution to the debt problem, so you are going to have to be more specific. I don’t believe solving the LEO launch problem (in other words, achieving cheap lift) is an important societal problem and I don’t think it merits government spending. Furthermore, government funded manned spaceflight seems like a waste of money too. The solution would be to close down NASA manned spaceflight and maybe NASA as a whole.

As a space enthusiast however, I would be disappointed if that were to happen. If we accept there is a space agency that does manned spaceflight, then I think one major goal should be to open up space for mankind. I don’t see how you could justify it otherwise, since it would amount to no more than paid joy-rides for select government employees.

If there is to be an exploration program, it should be done with freely competing commercial launchers. The easiest and most effective way to do that would be by using propellant transfer. I would like to see the money earmarked for SLS + MPCV be redirected to a lander, probably with an orbital precursor first and an unmanned precursor before that.

The propellant consumed by such a spacecraft could establish a large and fiercely competitive propellant launch market. Within ten to fifteen years I would expect to see commercial RLVs with launch prices that would enable large scale space tourism and extensive government funded exploration and even some limited private exploration, say by the National Geographic Society, the Planetary Society or the Mars Society.

If a substantial fraction of the $3.5B/yr spent on Shuttle launches for the past thirty years could continue to be spent on launches, but competitively this time, then all that could happen.

Will it happen? Probably not, because nobody but the special interests care about this and their selfish behaviour will cause this not to happen.