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I don't need to account for any of it. I'm talking about this particular Buck Rogers design. Over 90 years since Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket into the atmosphere, fifty years since we landed a man on the moon, quantum leaps made in computing design and capability, alloy and composite fabrication, and a thousand other advances, experimental propulsion systems which get killed or tabled by everyone from environmentalists to hack bureaucrats, and Musk put all his chips on an oversized German V-2 rocket? Hell, even NASA's new Orion crew modules look like nothing but a hopped-up 1969 Volkswagen Beetle, with heated seats, Bluetooth stereo, in-seat DVD players, and and more leg room. They have Apollo written all over them. After fifty years? Really? As a spacefaring country, we have stalled since the shuttles were in the fleet. NASA is nothing but a political football these days, just like any other government organization. The Russians, for their part, are currently content with tweaking their existing hardware and program, making it as efficient as possible, providing taxi services to the ISS, and lending expertise to the Chinese, who seem to be more than eager to take a few risks. They don't have the upper hand yet, but the Chinese are gonna bite us in the ass if we don't dust ourselves off and get creative. It's all well and good that the private sector is picking up the ball - God knows the government, the big aerospace prime contractors, and all the red tape that goes with it don't a have a corner on the market anymore - but you're not gonna send a rocket with Acme Rocket Co. stenciled on its side into orbit and expect it to perform how SpaceX said it would. It's called instinct. I saw this coming.