Hi All

We're all fond of Jeff Bell's dummy-spits about this or that space issue, but I wish he'd get his facts straight. Sheesh! Here's his latest gripe-fest which carries on about how the old ICBM rocket makers have tainted aerospace design. While I agree with his core thesis the crap he says about the Saturn V is laughable, claiming it was useless for commercial applications. What a crock! Mark Wade's research clearly shows that lighter payloads could've easily been lofted by simple modifications of core Saturn V components. Examples can be found here and here. And being Saturn, for a little extra effort, its first-stage would've been fully reuseable. In reality the Saturn V got canned because the aerospace lobby wanted something NEW to throw gigabucks at (to beef up their COST-PLUS returns) not something that threatened to be highly capable and CHEAPER with every launch.

Adam