What are we to think of the news that Roton looks like it's crashing and the
other "indie" booster-builders of the 1990s are either dead or dying? I hate
to admit it, but like so many stories in the space arena, it looks like
another case of "too little, too early." All of these endeavors seem to
share a common theme: A single visionary who manages to sell an image of
being able to "do it different this time" to just enough investors and
engineers to get a highly visible start, followed by a painful, embarrassing
failure before anything really gets off the ground. The community of space
enthusiasts seems to have had such a short memory for these failures that the
pattern has been able to repeat itself a number of times.
For myself, at least, I've think I've finally gotten to the point that I
won't be fooled again. The technology just hasn't gotten to the point that
private venture investment can make a go of it. There aren't any
intermediate steps to orbit to establish an incremental approach that
smaller, private ventures can build on one step at a time: The initial
threshold of success is just too high. Until material and manufacturing
technology get to the point where a relatively small group of people can make
a go of it n one relatively short push from start to finish, I think space
access will continue to be the domain of governments and huge institutions.
Go nanotech!
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
ICQ # 61112550
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:43 MDT