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Sunday, February 26, 2012

None Are Really a REPLACEMENT for Shuttle----Future based on HOPE---re: NASA Plan Puts America at Risk

suspect the video was produced to try and mitigate the idea that without Shuttle we have no human spaceflight program and that fifty years after the beginning of human space flight the US no longer has the capabilties it had in 1962. It makes for a good story, but the fact is in 1962 we could place a man in orbit and today we no longer can. The foolishness that is the space program today is that we gave up the tremendous capabilities we had with no replacement in hand. The stupidity that is the nation's human space flight program management today is that you heard no one from NASA speak up and say that shutting down Shuttle prior to having a replacement in hand was dumb. 

Fact is, all the commercial concepts are great ideas and maybe in the future some or all will come to pass. Hopefully the sooner the better. Hopefully they will be safe and provide the needed services. Hopefully the commercial world will be able to scale up to safe production standards. By the way, based on my recent discussions with people working the commercial programs this is a major hurdle. Producing the capsules on an assembly line basis won't be quite as easy as producing a single capsule for a first test flight over many years. 

Unfortunately, all of hese are just concepts. None of these exist today. Unfortunately it looks like none will be available for quite a few years. Unfortunately none really are a replacement for Shuttle.

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