[KeithCu]

My 2nd freep post, I've been lurking for years. I interviewed Dr. Bradley C. Edwards, space elevator expert, recently. We talk about a lot of different things.

[Citizen Tom Paine]

One thing that we tend to overlook in this country is in-house experience. Prior to Nixon, NASA was a world leader in many areas of technology including electronic reliability. We consulted with them concerning the reliability problems that we were having with our gear.

When privatization occurred, NASA in-house technical experts, became contract managers. Private companies were supposed to have the skills, and all that a government agency had to do was to pay them and they could "buy" whatever was needed. In about 5 years, the keen technical edge started to disappear. Consequently, in about 20 years it became difficult to find anyone in NASA that had any technical expertise ( there were some exceptions naturally). The result was that the skills now resided in the private sector.

Fast forward to today. Now we are asking a dinosaur to design a current space program when most of the skills are not there. Think about the shuttle. Nixon's privatization has borne fruit.IMHO

[GOPJ]

I know this is off the subject, but did we have the technology to land a craft on the moon and then take off from it? In the '60's? Wasn't that a time period when we had to land craft in the ocean and have ships pick them up?

Not only did we "land" but we did a take us with no help - no structures to hold up the rocket? Looking back on it, it's starting to look like a fake. Flame away..