Wanted: A Gravedigger for NASA?

[Uryoces]

I believe I have been insulted, numerous times. Yea, verily I bleed.

My comment was to suggest that the shuttle's time is past. It's very pretty, but expensive in cost and lives. I remember following it's progress in grade school, and being very excited about the prospects of space travel. Dreams die hard. The Soviets have been using a tried and true 40-year old technology called Soyuz. At one time we had a program that was similar. With our adavances in materials and control systems today, we should be able to come up with something similar that makes more sense.

This makes the idea of a moonbase a realistic prospect. I won't go into how many advances came from the space program. Pure science needs to be done, and the Supercolider is important. However you weren't interested in finding out what I thought of it. Your Supercollider probably won't get done unless it's seen as a pork-barrel project that some state can reap the benefits from, and your billions of dollars wasted on it are somehow cleaner, and I won't hear you complain. Texas was the last state that would have had it constructed; Washington was beat out by superior politics I guess. How is creating a big magnetic ring in the dirt more important that two men scratching in the dirt on the moon? Will it help us create better fuel cells? Nope. The space program, and a company in Vancouver B.C. called Ballard Power Systems is seeing to that.

Planes with morphing wings? That seems to require advances in materials. Now, I wonder, which program is involved in materials like that? Will accelerating protons and antiprotons bring us any insight into this?

You're mixing your sciences together. The Supercollider won't tell us anything about superconductivity that can't be learned with out it. Indeed superconductivity is required for the larger accelerators, NOT the other way around.

All science exictes me, including the Supercollider, but you're not willing to find out, you jump to conclusions, and are ready to insult anyone that has a differing opinion.

You know the shuttle's external tank? It's a big shiny, aluminum tube.