Can't all space nerds get along?

From: Dan Wylie-Sears

> I'm saying that as far as I know it's possible to do economically with

> current underlying technology and without any big-deal improvements in

> design to reduce launch cost -- provided we reduce payload cost for
> most payloads. So (as long as we take cheapest-available rockets as
> the standard of comparison, not the Shuttle) reducing launch cost
maybe
> shouldn't be a very high priority.

The way of looking at this which I've come to accept is that if we were
to ramp up to the traffic model needed to support something like SPS or
asteroidal platinum even with existing rocket systems, we'd see the
cost/lb plummet markedly.

It could well be that in the space advocacy community there's too much
emphasis on new technology, when what's needed is the application
leading to greatly-expanded traffic models.

Regards,

Mike Combs