To: edwin hubble
The private sub-orbital craft are great, but they have only a third of the speed of the NASA scramjet, and about seventh of the speed needed for orbit.
It's true that the NASA scramjet is superior in some ways to the private suborbital craft, but I would point out that their objectives were very different. My only gripe is that NASA is an absurdly inefficient and cumbersome organization.
Wouldn't the people at NASA be capable of doing the same things if they worked somewhere else? It isn't as if having NASA printed on your pay stub magically endows you with knowledge that you wouldn't otherwise have.
113 posted on
11/20/2004 3:24:10 PM PST by
Jaysun
(If you are what you eat then I'm cheap, fast, and bad for your health.)
To: Jaysun
All the major aerospace contracting companies are free at any time to get investors and pursue the space plane or runway-to-orbit technology. Nothing is stopping them.
That's the way capitalism works.
Orbital Sciences made the Pegasus 4 stage rocket (with private funding), launched from an aircraft to put satellites in orbit.
What you are suggesting is happening now.
NASA is not preventing private development.
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