GeorgeNSpace said:

>I see space energy as the best hope for getting the public to
>fund space efforts.

If that were true then Space Exploration and Development would be doomed. Fortunately it is not true.

>The hundreds of billions we are giving to OPEC every year
>would build a lot of PowerSats.

Except that money is not going to PowerSats and never will. If money spent on pizza, pornography and women's cosmetics were instead spent on Mars colonization then we'd have a colony on Mars. That sort of argument is meaningless. Most people want their pizza but are not that concerned about colonizing Mars (they need to learn about the importance of colonizing space).

>Let's face it, sending humans to Mars is basically seen as another
>Bush joke outside the rabid space advocate community while folks
>like Burt Rutan are taking care of building a 2nd generation shuttle
>without NASA's help.

I wish sending people to Mars was a Bush joke but unfortunately Bush's Vision for Space Exploration is only about the Moon (the stuff about Mars is only empty talk). A Moon only exploration program is guaranteed to fail as a "Flag and Footprints" exercise just like Apollo.

Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne was a nice achievement and it is proper to praise Rutan for it. SpaceShipOne was not a spacecraft (it only got to around Mach 3). There was nothing new connected with SpaceShipOne that could facilitate a second generation space shuttle (yeah, I know he used a hybrid rocket and composite structure). SpaceShipOne is merely a high altitude aircraft (X-15 was much more sophisticated). Because of Rutan's sales pitch, SpaceShipOne gave space exploration advocates a nice warm and fuzzy feeling (nothing wrong with that). Unfortunately, it'll take more than a warm and fuzzy feeling to get us into Low Earth Orbit for less than $1000/kg.

Get clued up about the practicalities of getting off this rock and maybe you can help us do it.

Gary