SSTO Comments

You are under the entirely false impression that the Russian space
program is low tech. This is not true. The Russians are very good at
space, developed excellent technology, and brought it into very
effective operations. They do things differently (duh), sometimes
better and sometimes worse.

On Monday, June 10, 2002, at 12:01 PM, panamabob wrote:

> Ruskie technology, without the big bucks to spend on exotic,
> state-of-the-art alloys / material, etc. and with no "space pens" of
> their
> own (apparently borrowing the USA's office stock) are now conceded to
> be
> "roughly as safe" as their USA premium, top-shelf, counter part?
>

The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
orbital space colonies with ~500 times the surface area of the Earth in
usable real estate. See http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/
for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html