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How the West Wasn't Won
Nigel Assbackwards writes "Finally, after years of being furtively passed between trusted friends, the legendary NASA satire "How the West Wasn't Won" is available at spacefuture.
And Oh!, if only all space agencies were as loud and as totally ace as WideGroup's MirCorp intro."
The article criticises 'the government-started monopoly' due to the fact such an organisation wants to keep itself alive and thus will never get the job done. It goes on to bewail the fact that third parties with better solutions have been stopped from succeeding, for funding reasons.
Now if the government truly has been witholding monies from really good projects, sure, that's bad. But in my amateur interested following of the space progression, there hasn't been any 'wow' project which has simply been unable to get funding. There's a plethora of interesting designs and ideas out there, but no guarantee they'll work - and the big, bad, beast - NASA itself - does work on the 'crazy' ideas itself.
Small companies and hoobyists are working on alternate designs, such as the X-Plane prize efforts, but they do have a ways to go (Armadillo's latest launch, anyone?). For all it's sins, NASA did a good job early on - not the best, but who can do that? - although I'd agree it needs to start doing some proper advancement now. Less of the old tech, more of the ISS, and a lot more work on actually getting their next-gen designs out there!
But where space is concerned, I'm happy to play the waiting game. Impatient, but happy. The longer we wait, the safer and cheaper the eventual solution will be.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" whilst looking for a rock