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09/14/09
"the escape velocity for the Moon is about 2.38 km/s, or about 1.5 mi/s."
[www.googlelunarxprize.org]
Big difference.
09/14/09
09/14/09
Looks like at least Mach 5.
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I'm inclined to suspect the problem is infrastructure. Shooting something into space (safely) takes a lot of it. NASA has it. Everyone else... don't.
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09/14/09
NASA has realized that they CAN'T do everything. Their budget is continually cut and or misdirected by Washington into projects the "less than brilliant" politicians decide they want to spend money on.
So Nasa decided to put some of their budget into these challenges to help SOMETHING get done. Personally i think all of the NASA challenges are awesome. It really gives an incentive to entrepreneurs to try things.
Armadillo and Carmack are great in that they didn't start with existing knowledge. They have tried a ton of things that no one did before or thought wouldn't work. I love that up until this year they had a continuously running blog that showed all of their successes and failures. It was awesome to watch.
09/14/09
The only way to get enough smart people together is to fund them properly. And the only ones who will bother funding them properly is the Government.
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09/14/09
They do not "fund" the applicants but they are offering these prizes. There are something like 10 or 12 prizes they put out a couple years ago.
[www.nasa.gov]
Now John Carmack has made a ton of progress over there years and they have a couple of contracts with NASA and some other large space contractors that they are actually being paid for.
There is another "Prize" Out there right now too. Bigelow Aerospace - Owned by the guy who owns a big chain of hotels and motels - has a $50 Million prize for someone that will build a ship that can dock with their inflatable habitat they put in space. They have 2 up there now. www.bigelowaerospace.com
Big stuff out there in the world of Private Space. I love it!
09/14/09
If you disagree, then why don't you link me to a single, private organization that has a serious chance of making something like this happen. What, you're going to link me to something like Richard Branson's idiotic "space tourism" venture? Puh-leeze.
And as for your bringing up TARP and Social Security....wellll.... that just goes to show what line of the political spectrum you happen to fall on. And what line of the intelligent spectrum. Since those have not a single frigging thing to do with the issue at hand.
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09/14/09
as for you equating one's intelligence with where they fall on the political spectrum, that = BIG FAIL
We should be able to respect each others right to have personal opinions about politics/religion whether we actually respect those opinions or not. You may need to take a good hard look in the mirror FIRST, before you start casting stones.
09/14/09
That's not at all what I said. Why don't you take a second read, and this time read ALL THE WORDS I WROTE and don't just stop halfway through a paragraph.
allow the free market to work, there'd actually be MORE money available in the free sector to fund such projects
Hooray! Unprovable bullshit statements used to make an argument! How I love to see you on the internet!
and yes, there IS money in space (mining ore on the moon, creating new compounds in zero gravity, not to mention all the wonderful stuff that came out of NASAs work over the past decades)
Oh hooray! Even more unprovable bullshit statements based on imaginary facts with no concrete evidence to back it up! Oh there's money in space! We just have to set up an orbital space station to mine the rings of faerie dust that surround the planet! Yay! These are certainly factual things that anyone can take seriously, and not just the imaginings of over-science-fictioned minds.
09/14/09