Originally posted by rstaff3
I am so happy about Bert & co.'s accomplishment that I'm beyond words. This is the start of a new era!
Now, here's some personal opinion, please don't flame me (too badly ) My personal feeling is that NASA needs to get better and hopefully do some wonderful things. There is no way to shed the bureacracy, however, that's a fact of life. Despite all of SS1's accomplishment, they are decades away from approaching anything NASA can do. I believe however, that they need to be left alone to do what they do. If the government or big contracting sneaks in with 'help', the effort may soon be indistinguishable from a NASA program. The most NASA should do is throw a party, give some medals, make Mike Melvill an honorary astronut, or whatever. Comments?
Originally posted by rstaff3
Now, here's some personal opinion, please don't flame me (too badly ) My personal feeling is that NASA needs to get better and hopefully do some wonderful things. There is no way to shed the bureacracy, however, that's a fact of life. Despite all of SS1's accomplishment, they are decades away from approaching anything NASA can do. I believe however, that they need to be left alone to do what they do. If the government or big contracting sneaks in with 'help', the effort may soon be indistinguishable from a NASA program. The most NASA should do is throw a party, give some medals, make Mike Melvill an honorary astronut, or whatever. Comments?
Originally posted by DynaSoar
NASA *could* do it, if it were allowed to (such as maintain licensing on its patents) and if the right kind of people -- engineers -- were put in charge. Engineers got us to the moon. Administrators got us "My God, Thiokol, what do you want me to do, wait until April to launch?", as well as the government subsidies for poor performance known as "expected cost over-runs".
Originally posted by shrox
Only the local news here in Eureka led with a story about Spaceship One. CNN didn't even mention it in their top of the hour headlines!
Originally posted by rstaff3
Wouldn't it be sweet if Scaled smoked a company like Lockmart!
Originally posted by illini868891
It would indeed! And I hope they do. Its not that I have anything against LockMart (although I wouldn't want to work for them). Its just that the big primes are so entrenched in the current business of government contracting (and the associated requirements) that innovation is difficult for such an organization. I'd *love* to see Scaled and the other X-Prize contenders continue to innovate. The key is to provide the incentive without the intrusion of big bureaucracy. Lembeck seems to get that (not bad for an Illini).
Originally posted by rstaff3
One of my worries is that NASA would go into requirements generation mode and kill many trees just to write the requirements for the resulting capability. Requirements that Lockmart is better suited to addressing than Scaled.
Originally posted by Chilly
Short version is, Rutan & Allen have A LOT up their sleeves. They flat out said they're a lot closer to achieving orbit than anyone realizes...apparently there are other craft already in the works that haven't been made public yet.
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