Spirit on Mars Rekindles Speculation White House Will Send Humans (starting with Moon)

Space.com ^ | January 8, 2004 | Leonard David

[Salgak]

Solar Power Satellites. Helium-3 mining of the Lunar regolith for fueling practical Fusion powerplants. Zero-G growing of semiconductor crystals: Zero-g alloys of otherwise immiscible metals. Asteroid mining. For Starters....

And, of course, the sale of high-quality vaccum to fill electronic and picture tubes. (g)

[Salgak]

Oh, and as for rockets that can use Airports: McDonnell-Douglas was working that 5+ years ago with the DC-X/ Delta Clipper project: Single Stage To Orbit: Rockets the way God and Heinlein intended (g)

[<1/1,000,000th%]

How about the Pluto Fast Flyby?

[RightWhale]

there has to be an industry to be in space

Asteroid mining is the only major industry that can be profitable right now.

[claudwitz]

anyone think we could volunteer the weasels and dean as guinea pigs in a test?

[plain talk]

Right. Could still wait until after reelection. It is not exactly urgent. As much as I am for space exploration I think its preposterous to push such an idea with $500M deficits. A mars mission is going nowhere until the deficits go down.

[rangerofrage]

The Delta Clipper was so cool. It was such a shame that they cancelled it. It reminded me of some books I read as a kid, Tom Corbet Space Cadet. The Clipper reminded me of their space cruiser, Polaris. But the Polaris was much bigger and had atomic engines. It had a crew of only three, Tom, Roger Manning and Astro a swarthy Venisun. Ha! Those were the days.