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We learned a painful lesson when the space shuttle retired without a follow-on capability to take U.S. astronaut researchers to the space station.

We actively ignored every common sense instruction from the electorate and completed Mr. Bush's deliberate plan to leave the United States without human launch capability.

Must be a typo in the article.  Happens all the time.

Best comment of this thread.

Remember plane change costs. Mercury's orbit is the most inclined of the planets.

Hmm. That's kind of neat. It's an added element in terms of getting to Mercury.
But also seems like it gives more options in terms destination, which may be at inclination [a lot space rocks]. You can leave [or arrive] at Mercury at a zero inclination, but you leave [or arrive] at a 7 inclination to solar planetary disk.

Thanks Proponent. Actually, Figure 6 on page 20 gives a graph for 100 nmi and unmanned Saturn IB to 28.4°. The graph also shows 40,500 lb or 18.37 t.

I'd prefer if this was in a digital format.   If not, I might have to buy this anyway.

What were the differences?

The DoD imperative was "assured access" and "responsiveness" to support DoD requirements; NASA has no such mandate.

Responsiveness? Just how long did it take to get a Titan III to launch and the same question for a Saturn 1B ( cargo )?

Too long by many accounts; it was a labor-intesive and extended effort (e.g., see Analysis of Titan IV Launch Responsiveness, Captain Michael T. Dunn, USAF, 1992).  Can't speak to Saturn, but the assumption at that time appears to be it would have been at least as long, if not longer, and thus not satisfy DoD requirements.

Titan IV is not applicable to Titan III.  The additional SRM segments and Centaur adding a lot of time to the flow.  Additionally, there was no real processing facility for most TIV payloads, and so they went to the pad and did all testing and propellant loading while on the vehicle.

Now I really wish we had kept Saturn 1B and no shuttle.
Saturn 1B would not have been the common launcher until the '80's ( for payloads greater than the Titan III could handle ) but at least it would have already been flying.

So what would the Air Force need the Saturn 1B to do that it could not do that the Titan IV could do ( include a RL-10 3rd stage to the Saturn 1B for BLEO payloads )?

In 2011 Avanti sought and won an arbitration award against SpaceX for return of Avanti's launch deposit. This is another example of an unhappy SpaceX customer. I doubt we'll have any way of knowing how happy the silent majority of SpaceX's customers are or aren't until we see how many repeat customers they get.

Most of SpaceX's signed customers also have backup option contracts signed with other providers. At this point the company has enough of a track record that customers know exactly what they are getting. The launch will probably be a couple years after it was promised, and the launcher may or may not be the most reliable thing on the market.

For many of the customers, their deposits on SpaceX launches amount to strategic investments, very similar to NASA's contracts with SpaceX. Pay a few hundred million up front, and support a domestic alternative to paying ULA prices on one hand or dealing with ITAR on the other. It's worth it to them as a real option if it means it applies pressure on other providers to innovate and cut costs. That's not to say they won't sue the shareholders for every red cent if the company goes under, but being listed on the SpaceX manifest requires other providers to call their bluff.

They all seem to agree that Mars is long term human exploration goal.
Which I agree with.
But it seems the long term [longer than Manned Mars] goal of the space environment is the utilization of energy generated in space for use on Earth- space solar satellites. Which considering there current budgetary
woes, may be regarded as distraction.
But such as goal has more value to the people on Earth, and one could have
a long term partnership with other nations which is aligned to this goal.

And long term possible use of space to harvest solar energy is another key thing to consider when is considering involving the Moon in near term exploration.
If one can commercially mine lunar water and make lunar rocket fuel one could lower the costs of leaving the Moon. And making rocket fuel from water requires a lot electrical power.
So the only thing stopping us from shipping solar panel into space in order to harvest energy from Space is the high cost of lifting anything from Earth's large gravity well.
So with the Moon if there is cheap rocket fuel you can get to point of costing less to lift payload into orbit from Moon as compared to Earth. You could get payload cost to $100 per lb fairly quick and with more certainly from the Moon as compared to from Earth. And the Moon could eventually get to point where it less than $1 per lb to lift payload [even using chemical rockets]- which quite difficult [not probably possible within a century or two] to get to such a low cost lifting from the Earth.

If launch cost were $100 per lb from Earth, one could begin consider that solar panels could shipped from Earth to be used to harvest solar energy to Space- and this lowest conceivable with chemical rockets from Earth [and the cost of rocket fuel isn't much of factor- but
rocket fuel is cheap on Earth. If the Moon's price of rocket were 10 times Earth cost- or less than $5 per lb, then cost shipping payload could some multiple of rocket fuel cost- say 5 times the rocket fuel cost- or $25 per lb of payload lifted.
Put different way SSTO from the Moon is easy. Apollo not only did SSTO, but using a single stage it lower a SSTO vehicle to the lunar surface- the LEM descent stage landed the Ascent stage.
Or a Earth suborbital spaceship needs more delta-v than lunar SSTO.

Anyhow, Manned Mars may be 30 to 40 years away- if so, harvesting solar energy from Space is about 50 to 60 years away.
Or I don't think we have a future where we start landing humans on Mars and it not just one trip [flags and footprints] and within 20 year we aren't starting to harvest solar energy in space to sell on Earth.

So a path to manned Mars is lunar exploration, but Manned Mars is also a path to harvesting solar power from Space for use on Earth. {mainly due Manned Mars requires a lot of rocket fuel in space}.

@jeff_foust: Reisman: all SpaceX CCiCap milestones to date completed on schedule and successfully. Pad abort test on track for December. #spacetechexpo

I'm encouraged to see that SpaceX's CCiCAP SAA from last July cited this December for a pad abort test. So no date slippage in the last 10 months. Next formal abort test milestone is a pad abort test review in September.

Anatoly proves yet again that nobody finds better illustrations than he does.  The book is almost worth the purchase price from the pictures alone, from what I can see.  I'm glad to see he went with a narrative outline, which I thought was the right way to tell the story of the USSR & Russia's space program.  The N-1 looks rather ridiculous with that many different stages in it.  I'd love to see the simple internals of an Energia next to the N-1's. 

Fregate, by any chance, do you know if Anatoly is comparing those two LVs in a diagram in the book? 

275 seats sold is quite a bit higher than the last number I'd heard. I'm glad that they're making steady progress on sales as well as Lynx.