Rick Baudé Wrote:
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> I posted this elsewhere, but right now we've
> achieved the holy grail; recycling rockets.

The first holy grail at least. Wasn't Russia already working this out?

> After that it's a matter of recovering all of the booster rockets and then
> we will truly enter the era of spaceflight.
Well... there is the little matter of (in the tone of the old 'where's the beef' commercials) - "Where's the profits?"

Granted they don't have to be *real* (1949, California), but they have to be perceived.

>
> The 'space elevator' seems to be like the 'solar
> sail' one of those 'blue sky' projects that makes
> it off the drawing board for about five minutes
> before it sails into the trashcan for whatever
> reason. Only to be dragged back out of said
> trashcan every year or two and back onto the
> drawing board before it gets tossed out again.

Because it's a wonderfully elegant conceptual solution in search of an engineering solution.

Use a LaGrange point, put the top into geosynchronous orbit and let centrifugal force counter gravity's pull to hold the entire structure upright... then ship payloads up and down.
Truy elegant math... in need of engineering ;0


>
> As far as drones goes. Sounds like a good idea.
> But I think there was one to have an inflatable
> blimp that would float along over the martian
> landscape.
Yeah - they dismissed it because the payload for the material and the 'airpump' and the mechanism was too expensive... I liked one fella's idea elsewhere... just ship the darned 3D Printer to Marrs. Follow it with payloads of polymer. First printing job: a bitty drone that can go fetch these payloads back to the printer and build up from there. That way- you can build the base for human occupation LONG before you put a human there ;0

Again that never went anywhere. Anyhow
> NASA seems to be good at pitching ideas but the
> follow through development and deployment is
> pathetic.

Yep. They shone with an almost supernatural light in the 60's.
Now. They are the anchor that never says !way