TGD(ver 1.0) Waste of Time

Hi Mark,

I understand that the way the Chinese economy is developing they are
expected to become the wealthiest country on this planet within as
little as 10 years.

Best wishes, Andy.

the_doctor@... wrote:

> I think what the US needs to push it a head is not internation
> cooperation, but a return to some sort of space "cold war"
> conditions. Apollo would probably not have happened yet if it had not
> been for the political desire to beat the Soviet Union.
>
> This is why I keep hoping that some other country (that we don't like
> too much) will suddenly decide that it wants to sink loads of cash
> into a manned space program... I have some hopes for China... but I
> wonder if they have enough money to sustain the effort. The Soviets
> really let us down by not completing the N1 and getting to the moon.
> Scare congress, I say!
>
> Mark
>
> On Thu, 29 March 2001, Al Globus wrote:
>
> > You provided one hypothesis as to why they have not produced. It's
> not
> > unreasonable, but I don't think it fits the data. Several countries
> have
> > developed launch vehicles with little or no connection to the U.S.
> > (China, India, USSR), some of these countries have been active
> enemies
> > of the U.S. The notion that U.S. pressure prevented these folks from
>
> > building $100/lb to LEO vehicles seems unlikely. BTW: the new
> Indian
> > launcher just suffered a failure.
> >
> > Here's another hypothesis: I'm a programmer. When my programs fail,
> I
> > can examine the wreckage and usually figure out what happened. If I
>
> > designed rocket engines, when they failed there would be little
> pieces
> > of metal over the place and some telemetry until shortly before the
> > failure. Figuring out what happened is a little more difficult.
> Fixing
> > it requires building a whole new rocket, not just changing a few
> > characters in a file. Talk to anyone who's actually built a rocket
> that
> > will go on a predictable trajectory.
> >
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>
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