Robert,

You dated yourself when you said:

"I've been fascinated by the subject since I was kid. One of my treasured possessions is a first-edition copy of Max Faget's "Manned Spacecraft Design" which I devoured one summer between Gemini missions."

Your comment about Faget's book means your age is in the mid forties.

I bought that same book as a kid and have it somewhere (need to find it). Max Faget is one of history's greatest aerospace engineers (in the same league as Kelly Johnson, von Braun and Goddard). The biggest mistake in the history of Space Exploration was throwing the Apollo program into the trash can after Apollo 17. The second biggest mistake in the history of Space Exploration was using the current Space Shuttle design instead of Max Faget's Two Stage To Orbit (TSTO) space shuttle design.

Gary