“Ray” over at the Vision Restoration blog writes about the ridiculous discussion last week on SLS/Orion:
This past week rewarded us with a panel discussion Removing the Barriers to Deep Space Exploration. The subject of the panel turned out to be the SLS heavy lift rocket and the Orion spacecraft. Surprisingly, in spite of the title of the panel, the discussion was not about cancelling SLS and Orion to allow funding to go to the robotic precursor missions, exploration technology development, and affordable space infrastructure needed for actual deep space exploration that have largely been squashed by the SLS/Orion pair. In fact, the discussion really didn’t seem to be about barriers to deep space exploration at all. Instead, it seemed like a snugglefest of love for the expensive capsule and even more wildly expensive rocket.
I weary of even writing about it any more, it’s so unutterably absurd.
OK, so what’s to keep someone, or multiple someones (competition!) from setting up off-shore gambling sites where, based on their age, gender, medical and family history, people can make bets on whether or not their annual medical expenses will exceed some selected amount? Currency controls?
The fact that the federal government would fight this is a stark testament to what a huge encroachment on liberty this monstrosity is.
Many of the “rocks have rights” crowd would like it to be, though. One of the problems with the Outer Space Treaty was that it was modeled on the Antarctic Treaty.
[Update a few minutes later]
Oh, Paul, please:
With launch costs of thousands of dollars per pound (and unlikely to come down significantly for the foreseeable future)
They are likely to come down to hundreds, or tens of dollars per pound within a decade, now that we have some actual competition and innovation happening in the industry.