Need to dump some thoughts before I get back to work...

The hearing was not as bad as I anticipated - at least the parts I saw, as my connection kept dropping. I am constantly amazed by our representatives and their ability to master and deal with large amounts of information on diverse topics.

I was most heartened to hear committee members speak out for the need to see that NASA is adequately funded for a 6 man crew for ISS. Dr. Weldon's comments were most promising, some $1.3 billion worth, if Tumlinson will now just get to f*** out the way. (Finally remembered that his sugar daddy is Walt Anderson.)

If Semenov will now finally confirm his retirement and his successor, there'll be more resources coming from their side too, via the Enterprise module. Good to hear they finally straightened out their com sat mess.

The performance of the Russian scrubbers was discussed in detail some 10 years ago at their first technical stymposium in the US, held in Reston. The assumption has been that they have operated them at maximum output - I don't know if that's correct, but the specs are in the tech book from that meeting. Besides power requirements, another issue is how long a time they can be operated for continuously.

Dr. Aldrin was most interesting. His Starlifter design preceded the latest Baykal design from Krunichev by a good 7 years or so. It remains to be seen whether Krunichev goes with Angara, Baykal, or Baykal boosters around an Angara core - you can be sure that detailed technical analysis is going on now at Krunichev -

Dr. Aldrin raised the issue of the use of SLI funds, and he may be on to something, but not the way he proposed. How about if instead of just a CRV, you started to work on a mini-shuttle - but this time with Europe and Japan? After all , Europe had Hermes, and Japan had Hope. What say a mini-shuttle that could be launched by any medium heavy lifter like the Atlas 5, Delta 4, the H2, the Ariane 5, or the Aurora or new Krunichev launcher? Of course, one of the big problems is dealing with the aerodynamic forces generated by a nose mounted mini-shuttle, but maybe either side mounting or a fairing could be used -

This might free up enough money for work on the spaceplane, or a heavy lift re-usable vehicle -

Back to working on the real problem, asteroid and cometary impacts -

EP