Dennis Wingo

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• Commented on Visiting Plymouth Rock Via Dual Orions

  There are reasons to go there other than scientific. Exploration is a worthy pursuit in and of itself. In another time this would be true, but today all of our space efforts should, in my opinion, be put toward economic...

• Commented on Learning From The Past

  jml Thanks for the correction but some of the dates are arbitrary as the Pacific Railway act had several milestones and the timing of the one that I picked was merely interesting. Steve Priceless comment. Joe The Internet is an...

• Commented on Learning From The Past

  I am not so impressed that you spent several paragraphs sniping at how much trivia I packed into a post written to someone who everyone knows already knows it. Joe I apologize if I am seeming to snipe here. What...

• Commented on Learning From The Past

  discovered in '94 with Clementine and confirmed just last year. You might as well have said in 18whatever that if a railroad was useful, there'd already be one. I would suggest reading up on the early history of the space...

• Commented on Learning From The Past

  Excellent point. If you want to exploit the moon's resources, a robotics program gets you there MUCH faster and much cheaper. Even with manned presence on the moon, robotic assisted exploration, construction, mining, etc., will be required to expedite the...

• Commented on Learning From The Past

  Addendum Responders talk about the lack of well defined economic activity that is already known as a reason that we cannot make the comparison between the national railroad and a cislunar infrastructure. I have read basically everything written about the...

• Commented on Learning From The Past

  I know in the past you have posited PGMs and/or He3, but neither of these currently have a market, one because there is no actual reactor to put it in and the other because the current metal costs are restricting...

• Commented on Learning From The Past

  While the West required a huge capital investment, the resources of the West were well known by the 1850s, there were other ways of accessing this territory (by clipper ships passing around S America), You underestimate the value of cutting...

• Commented on Dazed and Confused on "The Hill"

  There were quite a few people with successful experience, in their 50s and 60s, and still with NASA who were also ignored and shunted aside. Or if they were SES's and complained, they were fired....

• Commented on Some People REALLY Want To Go Into Space

  From the history file, Truax on the Johnny Carson show. http://neverworld.net/truax/video/TRUAX_TONIGHT_SHOW.WMV...

• Commented on Kepler Discovers Two Planets Transiting Same Star

  Small star don't live as long and that has to be taken into account. Small stars actually live longer than big ones....

• Commented on Some People REALLY Want To Go Into Space

  This reminds me of Robert Truax's Project Private Enterprise from the early 80's where he basically was going to do the same thing. He even had his private astronaut chosen. They guy's name was Fell Peters....

• Commented on Dazed and Confused on "The Hill"

  Of the NASA named leaders for Constellation, virtually none had any experience in any of those DDT&E efforts. In several instances they were naming SES, GS-15 and GS-14 managers who were not old enough to have participated in those DDT&E...

• Commented on Dazed and Confused on "The Hill"

  The NASA leaders had been working on rocket (von Braun and his team), missiles and aircraft R&D (Kraft, Gilruth, Low, etc) through WWII and the 1950s, all had 10 to 30 years serious experience, and consequently were almost all considerably...

• Commented on Dazed and Confused on "The Hill"

  a bunch of 20- and 30-somethings I would note that the average age of the Apollo workforce was 26....

• Commented on Air Force Set to Launch First AEHF Satellite

  Excellent! The AEHF birds are carrying 5 kW hall thrusters. This should give Aerojet a nice flight demo and help bring this technology into more general acceptance in the community....

• Commented on NASA Ames Makes Payloads Out of Phones and Toys

  Universities and private groups like AMSAT have tried for years to get the DoD and NASA to change the way that they do this qualification with little success. AMSAT pioneered flying plastic chips when NASA/DoD said that they would not...

• Commented on Klaus Heiss

  A good man and a great space advocate goes on to his reward....

• Commented on The Senate NASA Compromise: A Hinge of History?

  At the end of the day, the operative term is: Show me the money. Does congress have the will to provide the money that this bill requires, especially after the hundreds of billions we have wasted on other things, or...

• Commented on Senate and White House (Apparently) Compromise on NASA Policy

  Well, after reading the authorization language, it is not all that bad. The proof will be in the appropriations and how that is carried out. Will the congress provide the money for the laundry list of items contained in the...

• Commented on Senate and White House (Apparently) Compromise on NASA Policy

  To me it looks like about $25 Billion a year to do what they want. Me thinks that the money part will be punted until after the election and the hope is that the rubes will think that something has...

• Commented on Senate and White House (Apparently) Compromise on NASA Policy

  Well, after reading the authorization language, it is not all that bad. The proof will be in the appropriations and how that is carried out. Will the congress provide the money for the laundry list of items contained in the...

• Commented on Senate and White House (Apparently) Compromise on NASA Policy

  Bye bye Flagship technology missions....

• Commented on Charlie Bolden: Stealth Middle East Diplomat?

  If we limit this to an engineering debate on whether we should go to Moon or Mars first, that fine. Engineering is only part of that debate. Gordon Woodcock said it best about the different destinations: Going to Mars rather...

• Commented on Charlie Bolden: Stealth Middle East Diplomat?

  If we want to colonize Mars, we need to start now by doing ISRU on Mars. You are not going to do enough ISRU on Mars to support even a small installation without nuclear power. Nuclear power, at least 100...

• Commented on Charlie Bolden: Stealth Middle East Diplomat?

  Uh, no, thats water, not oxygen. It takes a lot of electrical energy to get water. Where are you going to get that? Sorry meant to say electrical energy to get oxygen from the water....

• Commented on Charlie Bolden: Stealth Middle East Diplomat?

  In comparison, on Mars, you only need to scoop it up, maybe heat it up by 50 - 100 C. Not simple either, but simpler. Uh, no, thats water, not oxygen. It takes a lot of electrical energy to get...

• Commented on Charlie Bolden: Stealth Middle East Diplomat?

  These resource (Oxygen, water) are very difficult to extract on the moon, and much easier to extract on Mars. Upon what technical premise do you make this statement? A simple solar furnace on the Moon can raise a temperature of...

• Commented on HLV BAA Released

  Here, we can save the government a lot of money. http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/saturnv.htm :)...

• Commented on Charlie Bolden: Stealth Middle East Diplomat?

  he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering." ...........................