cutting the cheaper launchers

fyi, space.com has an article today on Space Power Satellites; c.f.,
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_solarpower_010302.html.

Ron

"Combs, Mike"
ssi_list@... ssi_list@...
03/05/01
09:09 AM
Please
respond to
ssi_list

Has it occurred to anyone else that putting the possibility of solar
power satellites further off into the future will help more ensure money
for
the oil industry in the mean-time? Could that be why NASA's budget was
cut
by G. W. so NASA was forced into canceling the X-33?
I wonder?
Hardly anyone gets more passionate about SPS (or more impatient for it)
than I do. But still, I tend to be very skeptical of these kind of
conspiracy-type notions. A few decades back, one might have used the same
kind of logic to argue that the makers of home movie film might try to
suppress the advancement of magnetic video tape for the consumer market.
But the reality is that we buy VHS cassettes that have names like Polaroid
and Kodak on them. And by the same token, if we ever do move into an era
of SPS, I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of them weren't funded and
constructed by Exxon or Chevron.

I think the only problem with SPS is that it's outside the imagination of
so many. Or alternately, that people's imagination concerning it are
charged with fear.

Regards,

Mike Combs