Re: RE: RE: starship-design: Interstellar mission within fifty years

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 10/13/98 5:38:06 PM, lparker@cacaphony.net wrote:

>Kelly, Zenon et. al.,
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>> You are partly right, but, first, it is a good strategy
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>> to use as much of already proved technology rather than make
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>> all the things anew. Second, obviosly some technology
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>> progress has been made, for example the Saturn V rocket,
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>> which is to this day one of the largest (if not still the largest)
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>> as concerns carrying capacity. It would be more than sufficient
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>> as the Zubrin's Mars Direct booster - unfortunately its assembly
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>> lines were dismantled long ago and as far as I know,
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>> none is preserved (even rusted).
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>>
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>>
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>> > >With current attitudes, it is not going, but crawling,
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>> > >and not always ahead.
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>> > >Say, Pathfinder was a nice toy, but no number of Pathfinders
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>> > >will build the necessary space infrastructure.
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>> >
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>> > Big agree.
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>Several years ago I read an article somewhere about how someone in the space
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>program had realized that we were reinventing the wheel. It seems that a lot
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>of the small things were getting reinvented again and again because there
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>was no database of designs that had been proven to work reliably. For
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>instance, if you needed a turbo pump, you designed a turbo pump instead of
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>getting one off of the shelf. Has anyone heard what became of his idea to
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>start such a technology database?
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>Lee

No, though there has been increasing interest in reusing old designs.  On the
other hand lots of the old designs are really dated.

Kelly