Andy

Comment Threads

• JoeCooper commented on NAC Is Dissatisfied With NASA on Commercial Plans (or lack thereof)
  Why do you still say such a ridiculous thing? The US military uses airlines. All the time. When shuffling troops they give 'em a plane ticket. Every time I go through ATL or any other major airport its full of US troops. So what specifications exactly? Please expand on your statement. Bare in mind that we already buy seats on Soyuz and are buying Dragon cargo flights....

• orionContractor commented on NAC Is Dissatisfied With NASA on Commercial Plans (or lack thereof)
  " I never said that. I said there shouldn't be a "separate" program. NASA LEO needs can be met by commercial means, there is no need for a US Gov't managed vehicle. Also, we are not talking public utilities,services or infrastructure, space is a place. Launch vehicles and spacecraft are not utilities or infrastructure like roads, schools, etc, they are conveyances. Just as the gov't manages airports and the airspace (infrastructure), it can manage/support spaceports and space traffic but it does not need to operate the vehicles that use them." That did not answer the majority of my points, just...

• ex_navy commented on NAC Is Dissatisfied With NASA on Commercial Plans (or lack thereof)
  That's a bit simplistic statement. Yes the military uses scheduled commercial airline service to move individual servicemembers between secure non hostile locations. They even will use chartered civilian aircraft to move whole units between, again secure non hostile destinations. They do not use commercial aircraft to move troops into and out of combat zones. The key in each of the commetcial cases is that the governement takes advantage of and uses capability that already exists and is servicing private markets similar to the governement's needs. That is not yet the case for commercial manned space flight. There is no commercial...

• orionContractor commented on NAC Is Dissatisfied With NASA on Commercial Plans (or lack thereof)
  Whoops typo "I do see the support" should be "I do NOT see the support". Kinda alters the whole meaning of that statement....

• JoeCooper commented on NAC Is Dissatisfied With NASA on Commercial Plans (or lack thereof)
  The airlines themselves don't fly into combat zones, but modified airliners do, carrying fuel, radars and in one cancelled case a laser. I don't think you can make the argument that they have different specifications unless you can actually show what those specifications are. It might be useful to have a vessel with an airlock and large, unpressurized trunk for LEO work, or it might be useful to have one that takes high speed reentries (e.g. Orion). But as long as we're talking about shuffling people to a space station, than the specs are exactly the same as Boeing's proposal...