NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe has decided that the Orbital Space Plane must be developed faster.

Somehow (as is often the case) this reminds me of a Simpsons episode. Specifically, the one in which Homer decides to change his name. The new nom de plume?

MAX POWER...

(He got it off a hair dryer...)

He says, "there are two ways to do something: the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way."

When Bart asks what the latter means, the reply is, "It's like the wrong way, except faster!"

The only way he is going to get it within that time frame at reasonable cost is if it is a capsule configuration.

BTW, Rand

Someone on a gun ULR lists himself as an Anti-Idiotarian and uses 'Zap' Brannigan as his avatar icon.

A little more Mat Groening reference.

BTW, if homer designed an OSP, he would take an Apollo booster and add 'more fins'. See if you remember the episode I am citing.

It is literally hard to believe how long things take to develop these days. I’m sort of a big WWII buff and back then the P51 Mustang (one of the top three fighters of the war) took (I think) less than a year to go from the beginning of the design phase to finished prototype. The soviets did one better by producing dozens of copies of a B-29 that had landed in Russia only one year before. By comparison - look at how long it has taken to field the V-22 or F-22 (which first flew in ~88 and ~91 respectively). I guess this is not always true though. Airbus expects to fly its A380 Super Jumbo (555 passengers) Jet only a little over four years after the contracts were signed in December 2000. It may have been largely designed by then though - not sure. If Airbus can do that - it ‘should be’ possible to do a super small space plane in five. I believe you’ll see CAD and CAS (simulation) start to lower development times across the industry.

http://uplink.space.com/showflat.php?Board=missions&Number=528192
Read the second post.

".. the nation to sail spaceward once again aboard Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour in the years to come"

Wow, the entire nation ?

Such energy and willpower. Spent for what cause ?

Homer: "I'm like that guy who single handedly built the rocket and flew to the moon, what was his name?... Apollo Creed??