As usual, Bell has a small handful of decent data points from which he manages to spin completely weird and wrong extrapolations. I think he's partially correct in saying that "rockets aren't rocket science anymore," -- ie that they aren't really high-technology endeavours. This is more or less true, as the China, Israel and India comparison illustrates. And his point about exotic fuels is well-taken. Then, as if he'd never even hear his first several points, Bell goes wildly awry in calling for radically increased spending on things like refactory metals, presumably so that rockets can become rocket science again...? In fact, high technology seems to have a way of mucking it up. One comparison which he tellingly doesn't make is between India's and Japan's launch vechile development programs. In every quantifiable way, Japan's has been much more advanced, far more expensive, and distinctly less successful than India's. So what gives? I think it points towards a different frontier of rocket science than advanced materials and high budgets -- rather, it points towards things like "part counts" and "management techniques" as the areas where true can occur. If he'd bother to look, Bell would find people like Elon Musk making this point in rather dramatic fashions.

Finally, Bell wraps things up with his mandatory dig at human spaceflight, having apparently entirely forgotten about the recent excitement in Mojave. I've never seen a crowd of tens of thousands assemble to see pictures released from the Hubble.

What a putz.