“Collins represents a generation of people that has no concept of the capabilities and modern potential of space robotics.”

Hmmm. =eyeroll= No doubt the robotic imagery obtained of the moon used in his Apollo 11 training escaped his notice.

Robert G. Oler wrote @ March 12th, 2012 at 7:39 pm
Lazy. Nothing absurd about it if you tok the time to look it up. Sort of like your error on O’Donnell. Amusing as ever.

@Coastal Ron wrote @ March 12th, 2012 at 6:05 pm
Only lame to you– but as noted, over your head. Still crankin’ to crank as ever.

“Spit came to mind as just finisheed a book on it and its various incarnations and usage over its time.”

So because you just read a book on a 74 year old airplane, you figure everyone else in the world must have read it too and would understand the weak reference you made?

You do the same thing with the Apollo program, in that you assume that everyone that watched it is still as smitten as you are, and if they were too young to have watched it, then they can’t be as passionate about space as you are (or as smart).

You lack empathy.

After so many months, why would there be any doubt about either the intelligence or sanity of the Space Policy troll?

Hi RGO –

Like to a ground attack plane out of necessity, but it was replaced in that role by the Typhoon.>>

Yeah. I find statements the other person made pretty silly. The Spit was great at what it did because it was designed for what it did…and was really crummy at everything else. The way to think of the Spit…is that it was the F-104 of its day…you could put jungle camouflage on the 104 and put a couple of 500 pound bombs…but all you had done was take a mustang and try and make a draft horse out of it…same with the spit.

It was like the 104 designed for air combat over its home turf (different environments of course the Spit was a dog fighter) but they had little utility outside of that…

Many years ago I had the honor of talking with a tour guide at the Imperial War Museum who was a spit pilot (we figured that out when he was taking us on a tour and we were at the Battle of Britain part and he was giving that part of the lecture standing next to a group of pictures…one of which had him climbing into his “kite”…)

anyway we (my partner was a pilot as well) talked with him quite a bit abotu the Spit and he talked about the photo reccon version as he put it “something had to give to carry the camera, they took out the guns”

The tour guide ended the war chasing Buzz bombs…he started combat in the BOB with 19 hours in spits, survived it, ground looped only 12 times (grin)…as he put it “A piece of Cake” (great show btw) RGO

This example doesn’t support your point at all. Taking a system that is designed for something relatively hard, like lunar transit, and adapting it to something that is relatively easy, like LEO transfer, is, well, easy. It’s nothing like going from the Moon to Mars, which is going from something that is relatively easier to something that is much, much harder.

Why are you so dense when it comes to straightforward logic?

“When a Mars expedition goes, it will most likely take a full ER extrapolated from what is learned from a lunar base experience crew w/appropriate training”

A human Mars mission may take a “full ER” but it’s not going to be easily “extrapolated” from “lunar base experience”. The gravitational environments are very different (especially the zero-g environment during transit to/from Mars), the surface contaminants that the life support systems have to keep out of the medical bay are very different (fibrile carcinogens versus asphyxiating hexavalent chromium), and the communications delays involved in remote procedures are radically different (near real-time versus up to 40-minute round-trip delays).

You are utterly and completely ignorant of any of even the most basic technical challenges involved in these missions.

“It’s silly using ‘Space Adventures’ as a supplement for a vibrant active space program”

I’m not using Space Adventures as substitute for a national space program. You claimed that there was no profit in space tourism. Space Adventures proves otherwise.

Can’t you even keep your own statements straight?

“You have a closed mind”

“Your own closed minded”

“Close minded”

Enough with the obsessive-compulsive routine. Get some psychiatric help or stop interacting with other people. You’re a creep.

I believe there is a point to human spaceflight, and that point is to use it for productive purposes such as tourism and research. But the value of human spaceflight is not infinite and is much less than its current cost. To make it worthwhile to invest in human spaceflight we have to make it substantially less expensve.

In 1915 US aircraft companies were being crushed by foriegn compeitors that had more effective government support. The original mission of NACA was to help US industry compete more effectively through research and develpment. Nowhere was that mission abrogated when NACA was combined with other federalinstallations to beome NASA. Right now our share of the commercial market (all sales not paid for with our tax dollars) is declining. If we cannot hold onto high tech manufacturing, human spaceflight will be irrelevant because we will not be able to afford it.

Frankly, it’s because the word just means something different to NASA engineers than it does to the public, and NASA doesn’t want to explain it. Of course, they have some incentive not to. The public perception of “robots” is that they are neat, cool, awesome, smart, vaguely threatening, and totally rad things. Why would NASA want to say “er, but we don’t quite do THAT stuff”? Yes, the RMS is a robot arm sort of like a ditch witch has a robot shovel. Sure, the RMS is somewhat “smarter” than the shovel, but who’s counting? Now, the ruse would be complete if you painted a face on each one.

There is also heat shield, radiation shielding and stronger structure (for possible higher g forces) for Orion that CST100 might lack. Dragon on the other hand was built with an eye towards BEO flight. Volume might be a problem in some others like Dreamchaser(there was a plan for a Dreamchaser XL that was larger).

You’re just crankin’ to crank.

Oh boy, he came up with a new sound bite to endlessly repeat.

I believe I’ve told you before, the broken record routine doesn’t help your case, it rather makes people doubt your mental soundness.