[AR] Re: Nova for our outward urge?
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 14:06:21 -0500 (EST)
On Tue, 29 Dec 2015, John Dom wrote:
US regime change wars cost trillions of $ the last 3 decades. Did those
make any money, did they achieve anything or did they achieve the
contrary? Looks like one hand (space) is unaware of knowing what the
other (military one) spends.
Space is quite aware of what is spent on wars; the problem is that nobody
wants to spend that much on space. The one time when money for space
really flowed freely -- roughly 1961-67 -- happened because space got
conscripted to fight one battle in the biggest war ever, not because space
itself was thought worthy of that much. When the battle was won, the
money went away.
NASA did not send men on the Moon ... with a grocer's mentality.
An amazing number of space enthusiasts still cling to the belief that
1961-67 was the normal state of affairs, which we can aspire to return to
if we find the right magic words. 1961-67 was an astonishing political
anomaly, inherently short-lived and unrepeatable. The freak political
consensus that supported it was gone before the first manned Apollo.
... Nova was not even the tallest concept in the sixties. So was going
for S-V only the correct decision: too small I'm afraid for colonizing
Mars.
Wernher von Braun would have been perfectly happy to set about colonizing
Mars with the Saturn V and its derivatives. Remember that the Saturn V
came out bigger than most of the original Nova concepts. Remember also
that KSC was designed for 48 launches a year, at a time when nobody
expected to reach the Moon, never mind Mars, with only a single launch.
Henry
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