Hmm. I stand corrected. The blurb I read said they were going to be introduced in May. Thanks for the info, and the picture.
I still like the red one, and the springboard slot. Color's fine and all, but it's not on my list of PDA necessities. A red aluminum case, however, is. : )
Found it. It's called an AxxPac, and it's SmartMedia, not compact flash. So I'm on drugs. : ) I know that the TRGPro (http://www.trgpro.com) accepts Compact Flash, but I don't know of any other way to do it.
I don't know if it works with the IIIc. Certainly not with the hardware that comes with the kit, as the IIIc is much larger than the III.
The kit consists of a gizmo that fits into the memory expansion slot on the Palm III, and a plastic clamshell replacing the back of the III's case. The clamshell has a slot in the side to accept the CF card. There's a link to a review of the thing here:
http://www.geekvortex.f2s.com/reviews/colorcase/ in dex.html
I'd paste the review to the expansion directly, but geekvortex absolutely SUCKS over slow connections.
You know, on further reflection, I'm not sure it's CF at all...it might be SmartMedia expansion cards...oh well. You'll look at it and see if it suits you. : )
Ummm...because you can actually buy the Edge, but you cannot buy the m500? Just a guess, here...
Hardware is hardware. Vaporware is not. The M50x series isn't even due to be announced for a month or three. I'd be shocked to see 'em available before August.
Uhhh....you're silly. I've never seen a PalmOS device that doesn't have a backlight. It may be that the ancient ones (Palm 1000, 5000) didn't have one, but everything since the Pro (released, what, four or five years ago?) has had a backlight.
Man, that's a hell of a lot of memory. My Palm III has 2mb of memory, and runs my entire life. I haven't the vaguest idea what I'd need 128mb for.
8mb would be nice. 16mb if I was going to be using some heavy duty mapping stuff. 128mb? There's no purpose I could turn my Palm to that would require that much memory. Do you have any idea how long that would take to sync?
My Palm is not supposed to replace my computer. It's supposed to give me the data I need when I'm not near my computer. This function, it does perfectly.
Don't forget TRGPro's compact flash-equipped Palm III. You can even retrofit a CF slot in your Palm III...I think the company is called AxxWare or something similar...
If you want an insanely great calendaring solution, check out WeSync.com. WeSync calendars is a free service that's a lot more flexible than the Palm calendar.
1) Multiple calendars. I have one for work, one for school, one for whatever my family's doing this week.
2) Shared calendars. I can publish my own calendars, and subscribe to other people's.
3) Killer desktop app. I have the WeSync desktop installed at work, where I don't have a cradle. I can enter an appointment on my desktop PC (I don't care for Graffiti very much), the appointment will sync to WeSync's server, and then it'll be synced to my home desktop and Palm when I get home. I almost never use Palm Desktop any more (except to edit Notepad items).
WeSync has been acquired by Palm, and their functionality is going to be incorporated into my.palm.com. Right now, the service is free (beer)...I have no idea how these guys make money. I do know that I would pay for this software...it's absolutely awesome.
1) is absolutely true.
2) is utter bullshit, unless you can cite some really convincing evidence. The mass of the Earth's mantle (which is liquid and moves around a LOT) absolutely dwarfs the mass of the water we've been moving around on the surface. If we drained the Pacific Ocean and moved the water to, say, Portugal, maybe.
The other thing to keep in mind is the terrible efficiency of the power distribution network. I believe (I can't cite this) that the power net wastes close to 40% of the power generated, just getting it to where it's needed. That, coupled with the fact that the vast majority of electrical power in the world comes from fossil fuels, makes a big problem for the pollution savings for widespread electrical vehicles.
Nope. The air pressure is higher on your body when in the torpedo position (since the same force must be exerted on a smaller frontal area to support your weight), but the violence in the pressure change wouldn't be any greater at high altitude than at low. I contend that maneuvers would be no more dangerous at high altitude rather than low, even though the jumper is traveling faster.
As long as he doesn't change body position, he won't break limbs. Think about it...if he lays down in the frog position, there's going to be a pressure force distributed across his body equal to his weight when he reaches terminal velocity, just like "low-altitude" skydivers. In other words, terminal velocity is reached when the pressure force exerted on your body by the air you're running into equals your weight. He won't have any more or less stress on his limbs than a regular skydiver...he'll just be traveling faster through thinner air. As he comes down into thicker air, he'll slow down to a normal skydiver speed, and since the pressure of the atmosphere increases gradually, the deceleration will be constant and non-traumatic.
I bet that even if he started in a torpedo and switched to a frog position, he'd have no more stress on his limbs than a regular skydiver performing the same maneuver....
And am I misremembering that there was a woman who was also making an attempt on Captain Kittenger's record?
I _am_ a rocket scientist (in training) and you are correct. : )
Speed of sound goes down as altitude goes up, due to thinner atmosphere. I think there is an altitude at which speed of sound goes back up, due to the coldness of the air, but I can't find any data close to hand that support my (possibly faulty) recollection.
Read here for more info.http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aerojava/mach.htm
It's called a reprogrammable ECU. Plug in your laptop (or your palm pilot), and adjust your timing and fuel delivery curves to your heart's content. The ones I know of are for Miatas, specifically turbocharged ones. (yeah, the hood's not welded shut so tightly that you can't stuff an 18psi blower in there...)
Check out Bill Cardell's http://www.flyingmiata.com for more info.
You've got it. The idea was to decrease the mean airspeed around the nose of the projectile, by setting up a standing pressure wave (sound wave) in the cavity.
They're not so much trying to dump heat as they are decrease the ablative forces on the tip of the projectile, and prevent the tip from heating up so much in the first place. Heat can be dumped into the body of the projectile much more rapidly than it could be dumped back into the air, but they were discovering that the heat built up so quickly in the tip, that they'd have to play some interesting games to keep the thing at a reasonable temperature.
The range on this thing wouldn't be stupendous, I bet. Particularly with small particles (ones with a low kinetic energy/cross sectional area) aerodynamic drag is going to really kill the velocity quickly. At these velocities, you have to play fun games with the shape of the projectile to cool the thing, so it doesn't just ablate away.
My aerodynamics prof at UT Austin was working on a railgun project for the Army at Balcones a couple years ago. He brought in some videos of the experiments they did with projectile shaping. Basically, the idea was to make a circular indentation in the front of the projectile (think like a hollow-point bullet) whose depth was tuned to the expected velocity of the projectile. (insert obscenely complex mathematics here) The idea was to set up a standing pressure wave in the nose cavity, so the moving air would cool the projectile. The tests I saw were with a plastic blank, but the full-on projectiles were going to be 2" diameter tungsten rods. I can't even really imagine enough heat to ablate a tungsten rod, but damn if that's not just what happens at those velocities.
The computer models I watched of these rods impacting armor plate were amazing. It looks just like those slo-mo milk drop photos, except instead of milk it's molten steel. Wow.
Twelve whole percent? Wow! Those greedy authors! They should know that their twelve percent is taking (really expensive) food out of the (really spoiled) mouths of (really wealthy) record companies' children's mouths! No way a stupid AUTHOR should make TWELVE WHOLE PERCENT on a work that they "wrote". Bah. They're all ignant hacks...after all, an arbitrarily large number of monkeys (given sufficient time) would be able to do THEIR jobs...
Uhhh...your figures may be right, but they still don't support your thesis. Just because book authors get fucked less roughly than musicians doesn't make it OK. The publishers are just as bad as the RIAA. Their cartel is just less well-organized.
Your point about the exclusivity of a cell-phone is well taken. Do a thought experiment, though. If two people sitting across from you were conversing in a different language, one that you didn't understand, would it be any different? Would you feel more or less included in their conversation? I agree with you, to a point: using a cell phone in a public forum where normally you'd converse with the people around you for too long can indeed be rude. Having said that, it is possible to have a cell phone conversation with somebody who for whatever reason can't be there IRL, and still be receptive to people near one in meatspace. Not to say it's easy, and it's certainly not necessarily one's default behaviour: but I submit to you that the issue is not the technology (which would not be present in my foreign language scenario) but the sensitivity/desire to be "inclusive" (I hate that word, but you see where I'm going) to the people around one in meatspace.
I dunno, if one of my friends is yapping on a phone for half an hour when I'm trying to have a conversation with them, I razz them good natured-ly. So long as I feel they're not being purposely rude (hey, maybe this is an important conversation they're having...none of my business, but it's not for me to dictate, right?) I don't sweat it.
So again, I don't feel the issue is technology. The issue is etiquette. If one is a courteous and thoughtful individual, no amount of technology is going to change that. If one is not, then one oughtn't be surprised that nobody wants to hang out with one.
Bottom line: my phone (I don't have a cell, but I've conditioned myself to ignore my landline if it's not convenient for me to answer it) doesn't become my master until I let it. Which I don't, so it doesn't. And no, I'm not going to let 'em implant one in my brain stem, thanks for askin'. : )
OK, this is a much better topic for discussion, IMHO. I think your thesis is, "Does ubiquitous communication enhance peoples' lives?" Don't let me put words in your mouth, but that's sorta what I'm getting from you.
I argue, "Yes." I carry on a long-distance relationship with my girlfriend. Without telecommunications, this would be impossible. Is it possible to have relationships without telecommunications? Sure. But don't think for a minute that I care any less or am any less devoted to this individual just because she's 1200 miles away from me. I talk to my grandparents more on the telephone than I ever could in real life. (no, my grandmother is not the one I'm having the long distance relationship with. That's gross.)
As far as getting skeeved out by people talking on cell phones, I really don't get it. I mean, would it be any different if they were talking to a person in the pax seat (or worse, in the back seat!)? These are meatspace communications...are they somehow more valid or useful than telepresence ones? (pick your catchall term for "communicating with others using technology")
I dunno...I just don't get what's so magical about meatspace conversations. Well, that's not true...there are avenues of expression and communication that are not available via telecommunications that can happen IRL (heh heh), but at the same time telecommunications has its own advantages and disadvantages.
I don't believe that technology devalues face to face communications: it just changes the set of circumstances that make f2f necessary. (note that f2f can be awfully expensive, say if the faces are on different continents...) Bottom line is, it's not a zero-sum game. I'd rather talk to my girlfriend on the phone than have a beer at the local pub. That doesn't mean I don't like said beer...but the fact that one communique is real and the other is electronic does not bear on their value to me.
Where's the virtue in not having access to everything? Does that somehow make one a better person? Why do YOU care that I want to talk to my grandmother while I'm eating dinner? How is your meatspace conversation somehow more important and meaningful and "real" than my telephone call? Why SHOULDN'T I be able to check my email, or chat, or play Everquest Online Gold Special Edition when on a long road trip (with somebody else driving)?
In other words, there are all kinds of unwise and rude things people can do. Wireless Internet connections are not going to make anybody MORE unwise or MORE rude.
I mean, if somebody's shouting to make themselves heard on a phone, that's no more or less rude than shouting to make oneself heard in a regular conversation. If somebody's reading Slashdot while they're driving, that's more or less unwise than reading the newspaper.
Unfortunately, Newt Gingrich had an idea for just this sort of plan for NASA, except that instead of funding on the front end, it offered bounties on the back end.
For instance, thinking about a manned Mars mission, the bounty structure would look something like this. (Note, the idea here I read about in Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" which is required reading for anybody interested in space exploration. The numbers, I pulled out of my ass.)
1) $400 million to the first mission to return to Earth with Martian rock samples
2) $100 million for a map of Mars with a specified resolution and specified percent coverage
3) $2 billion for sending an X person crew to Mars, and returning them safely to Earth after Y days.
He also suggested bounties paid to the astronauts per day on Mars. I like this idea a lot.
Unfortunately, this was before he was crucified by the media and rendered unelectable to anything other than dog catcher.
(PS, whatever you think about Gingrich's politics, the horrible press he got was just inexcusible. They made the man out to be the friggin' Antichrist...)
The Venture Star's fuel tanks are a very complicated composite structure, engineered to bear both pressure loads from the cryogenic fuels and some structural loads in the airframe. Unfortunately, during testing a manufacturing error (something to do with the insulating coating that protects the composites from the slushy cryogenic fuels...don't remember if it was the H2 tank or the LOX tank) one of the tanks failed catastrophically. It was a Bad Scene. Nothing that one wouldn't expect in testing (that's why you do testing, after all) but it was a big black eye for the program. Some people thought "Sheesh...if they can't build a gas tank, how the hell are they going to build a space ship?" but those people invariably don't have a clue as to the difficulties in handling cryogenic, and particularly slush, fuel materials.
1) The people who can't afford $50 aren't being charged $50. The tax rate is highly progressive, with the higher incomes bearing vastly more of the tax burden.
2) Poverty problems will NEVER be solved, certainly not by the government. In the mean time, I am all for research that will ultimately get us off this rock. Hopefully before a comet smashes us into oblivion.
Ask yourself where all this telecommunications juju would be without the space program. Then stop crying and pony up the measly $50 it costs each of us to support the space program. It's the best investment most of us will ever make.
Hey, I've got an idea...how about NASA funds itself by giving free launches and just takes a percentage on the profits for telco and TV satellites? Bet they'd make a mint.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm. I stand corrected. The blurb I read said they were going to be introduced in May. Thanks for the info, and the picture.
I still like the red one, and the springboard slot. Color's fine and all, but it's not on my list of PDA necessities. A red aluminum case, however, is. : )
Found it. It's called an AxxPac, and it's SmartMedia, not compact flash. So I'm on drugs. : ) I know that the TRGPro (http://www.trgpro.com) accepts Compact Flash, but I don't know of any other way to do it.
http://www.ams-fl.com/axxpac/e_index.html
I don't know if it works with the IIIc. Certainly not with the hardware that comes with the kit, as the IIIc is much larger than the III.
/ in dex.html
The kit consists of a gizmo that fits into the memory expansion slot on the Palm III, and a plastic clamshell replacing the back of the III's case. The clamshell has a slot in the side to accept the CF card. There's a link to a review of the thing here:
http://www.geekvortex.f2s.com/reviews/colorcase
I'd paste the review to the expansion directly, but geekvortex absolutely SUCKS over slow connections.
You know, on further reflection, I'm not sure it's CF at all...it might be SmartMedia expansion cards...oh well. You'll look at it and see if it suits you. : )
Ummm...because you can actually buy the Edge, but you cannot buy the m500? Just a guess, here...
Hardware is hardware. Vaporware is not. The M50x series isn't even due to be announced for a month or three. I'd be shocked to see 'em available before August.
Uhhh....you're silly. I've never seen a PalmOS device that doesn't have a backlight. It may be that the ancient ones (Palm 1000, 5000) didn't have one, but everything since the Pro (released, what, four or five years ago?) has had a backlight.
Man, that's a hell of a lot of memory. My Palm III has 2mb of memory, and runs my entire life. I haven't the vaguest idea what I'd need 128mb for.
8mb would be nice. 16mb if I was going to be using some heavy duty mapping stuff. 128mb? There's no purpose I could turn my Palm to that would require that much memory. Do you have any idea how long that would take to sync?
My Palm is not supposed to replace my computer. It's supposed to give me the data I need when I'm not near my computer. This function, it does perfectly.
Don't forget TRGPro's compact flash-equipped Palm III. You can even retrofit a CF slot in your Palm III...I think the company is called AxxWare or something similar...
If you want an insanely great calendaring solution, check out WeSync.com. WeSync calendars is a free service that's a lot more flexible than the Palm calendar.
1) Multiple calendars. I have one for work, one for school, one for whatever my family's doing this week.
2) Shared calendars. I can publish my own calendars, and subscribe to other people's.
3) Killer desktop app. I have the WeSync desktop installed at work, where I don't have a cradle. I can enter an appointment on my desktop PC (I don't care for Graffiti very much), the appointment will sync to WeSync's server, and then it'll be synced to my home desktop and Palm when I get home. I almost never use Palm Desktop any more (except to edit Notepad items).
WeSync has been acquired by Palm, and their functionality is going to be incorporated into my.palm.com. Right now, the service is free (beer)...I have no idea how these guys make money. I do know that I would pay for this software...it's absolutely awesome.
Works fine on Palm and Handspring (of course).
Wow. Maybe the quad espresso was a bad idea before posting. Do you have an argument here, or are you just screaming?
1) is absolutely true.
2) is utter bullshit, unless you can cite some really convincing evidence. The mass of the Earth's mantle (which is liquid and moves around a LOT) absolutely dwarfs the mass of the water we've been moving around on the surface. If we drained the Pacific Ocean and moved the water to, say, Portugal, maybe.
The other thing to keep in mind is the terrible efficiency of the power distribution network. I believe (I can't cite this) that the power net wastes close to 40% of the power generated, just getting it to where it's needed. That, coupled with the fact that the vast majority of electrical power in the world comes from fossil fuels, makes a big problem for the pollution savings for widespread electrical vehicles.
Nope. The air pressure is higher on your body when in the torpedo position (since the same force must be exerted on a smaller frontal area to support your weight), but the violence in the pressure change wouldn't be any greater at high altitude than at low. I contend that maneuvers would be no more dangerous at high altitude rather than low, even though the jumper is traveling faster.
As long as he doesn't change body position, he won't break limbs. Think about it...if he lays down in the frog position, there's going to be a pressure force distributed across his body equal to his weight when he reaches terminal velocity, just like "low-altitude" skydivers. In other words, terminal velocity is reached when the pressure force exerted on your body by the air you're running into equals your weight. He won't have any more or less stress on his limbs than a regular skydiver...he'll just be traveling faster through thinner air. As he comes down into thicker air, he'll slow down to a normal skydiver speed, and since the pressure of the atmosphere increases gradually, the deceleration will be constant and non-traumatic.
I bet that even if he started in a torpedo and switched to a frog position, he'd have no more stress on his limbs than a regular skydiver performing the same maneuver....
And am I misremembering that there was a woman who was also making an attempt on Captain Kittenger's record?
I _am_ a rocket scientist (in training) and you are correct. : )
Speed of sound goes down as altitude goes up, due to thinner atmosphere. I think there is an altitude at which speed of sound goes back up, due to the coldness of the air, but I can't find any data close to hand that support my (possibly faulty) recollection.
Read here for more info.http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aerojava/mach.htm
Uhh, make me. I know more about aerodynamics than any three people you've ever met.
It's called a reprogrammable ECU. Plug in your laptop (or your palm pilot), and adjust your timing and fuel delivery curves to your heart's content. The ones I know of are for Miatas, specifically turbocharged ones. (yeah, the hood's not welded shut so tightly that you can't stuff an 18psi blower in there...)
Check out Bill Cardell's http://www.flyingmiata.com for more info.
You've got it. The idea was to decrease the mean airspeed around the nose of the projectile, by setting up a standing pressure wave (sound wave) in the cavity.
They're not so much trying to dump heat as they are decrease the ablative forces on the tip of the projectile, and prevent the tip from heating up so much in the first place. Heat can be dumped into the body of the projectile much more rapidly than it could be dumped back into the air, but they were discovering that the heat built up so quickly in the tip, that they'd have to play some interesting games to keep the thing at a reasonable temperature.
The range on this thing wouldn't be stupendous, I bet. Particularly with small particles (ones with a low kinetic energy/cross sectional area) aerodynamic drag is going to really kill the velocity quickly. At these velocities, you have to play fun games with the shape of the projectile to cool the thing, so it doesn't just ablate away.
My aerodynamics prof at UT Austin was working on a railgun project for the Army at Balcones a couple years ago. He brought in some videos of the experiments they did with projectile shaping. Basically, the idea was to make a circular indentation in the front of the projectile (think like a hollow-point bullet) whose depth was tuned to the expected velocity of the projectile. (insert obscenely complex mathematics here) The idea was to set up a standing pressure wave in the nose cavity, so the moving air would cool the projectile. The tests I saw were with a plastic blank, but the full-on projectiles were going to be 2" diameter tungsten rods. I can't even really imagine enough heat to ablate a tungsten rod, but damn if that's not just what happens at those velocities.
The computer models I watched of these rods impacting armor plate were amazing. It looks just like those slo-mo milk drop photos, except instead of milk it's molten steel. Wow.
Twelve whole percent? Wow! Those greedy authors! They should know that their twelve percent is taking (really expensive) food out of the (really spoiled) mouths of (really wealthy) record companies' children's mouths! No way a stupid AUTHOR should make TWELVE WHOLE PERCENT on a work that they "wrote". Bah. They're all ignant hacks...after all, an arbitrarily large number of monkeys (given sufficient time) would be able to do THEIR jobs...
Uhhh...your figures may be right, but they still don't support your thesis. Just because book authors get fucked less roughly than musicians doesn't make it OK. The publishers are just as bad as the RIAA. Their cartel is just less well-organized.
Your point about the exclusivity of a cell-phone is well taken. Do a thought experiment, though. If two people sitting across from you were conversing in a different language, one that you didn't understand, would it be any different? Would you feel more or less included in their conversation? I agree with you, to a point: using a cell phone in a public forum where normally you'd converse with the people around you for too long can indeed be rude. Having said that, it is possible to have a cell phone conversation with somebody who for whatever reason can't be there IRL, and still be receptive to people near one in meatspace. Not to say it's easy, and it's certainly not necessarily one's default behaviour: but I submit to you that the issue is not the technology (which would not be present in my foreign language scenario) but the sensitivity/desire to be "inclusive" (I hate that word, but you see where I'm going) to the people around one in meatspace.
I dunno, if one of my friends is yapping on a phone for half an hour when I'm trying to have a conversation with them, I razz them good natured-ly. So long as I feel they're not being purposely rude (hey, maybe this is an important conversation they're having...none of my business, but it's not for me to dictate, right?) I don't sweat it.
So again, I don't feel the issue is technology. The issue is etiquette. If one is a courteous and thoughtful individual, no amount of technology is going to change that. If one is not, then one oughtn't be surprised that nobody wants to hang out with one.
Bottom line: my phone (I don't have a cell, but I've conditioned myself to ignore my landline if it's not convenient for me to answer it) doesn't become my master until I let it. Which I don't, so it doesn't. And no, I'm not going to let 'em implant one in my brain stem, thanks for askin'. : )
OK, this is a much better topic for discussion, IMHO. I think your thesis is, "Does ubiquitous communication enhance peoples' lives?" Don't let me put words in your mouth, but that's sorta what I'm getting from you.
I argue, "Yes." I carry on a long-distance relationship with my girlfriend. Without telecommunications, this would be impossible. Is it possible to have relationships without telecommunications? Sure. But don't think for a minute that I care any less or am any less devoted to this individual just because she's 1200 miles away from me. I talk to my grandparents more on the telephone than I ever could in real life. (no, my grandmother is not the one I'm having the long distance relationship with. That's gross.)
As far as getting skeeved out by people talking on cell phones, I really don't get it. I mean, would it be any different if they were talking to a person in the pax seat (or worse, in the back seat!)? These are meatspace communications...are they somehow more valid or useful than telepresence ones? (pick your catchall term for "communicating with others using technology")
I dunno...I just don't get what's so magical about meatspace conversations. Well, that's not true...there are avenues of expression and communication that are not available via telecommunications that can happen IRL (heh heh), but at the same time telecommunications has its own advantages and disadvantages.
I don't believe that technology devalues face to face communications: it just changes the set of circumstances that make f2f necessary. (note that f2f can be awfully expensive, say if the faces are on different continents...) Bottom line is, it's not a zero-sum game. I'd rather talk to my girlfriend on the phone than have a beer at the local pub. That doesn't mean I don't like said beer...but the fact that one communique is real and the other is electronic does not bear on their value to me.
Where's the virtue in not having access to everything? Does that somehow make one a better person? Why do YOU care that I want to talk to my grandmother while I'm eating dinner? How is your meatspace conversation somehow more important and meaningful and "real" than my telephone call? Why SHOULDN'T I be able to check my email, or chat, or play Everquest Online Gold Special Edition when on a long road trip (with somebody else driving)?
In other words, there are all kinds of unwise and rude things people can do. Wireless Internet connections are not going to make anybody MORE unwise or MORE rude.
I mean, if somebody's shouting to make themselves heard on a phone, that's no more or less rude than shouting to make oneself heard in a regular conversation. If somebody's reading Slashdot while they're driving, that's more or less unwise than reading the newspaper.
Unfortunately, Newt Gingrich had an idea for just this sort of plan for NASA, except that instead of funding on the front end, it offered bounties on the back end.
For instance, thinking about a manned Mars mission, the bounty structure would look something like this. (Note, the idea here I read about in Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" which is required reading for anybody interested in space exploration. The numbers, I pulled out of my ass.)
1) $400 million to the first mission to return to Earth with Martian rock samples
2) $100 million for a map of Mars with a specified resolution and specified percent coverage
3) $2 billion for sending an X person crew to Mars, and returning them safely to Earth after Y days.
He also suggested bounties paid to the astronauts per day on Mars. I like this idea a lot.
Unfortunately, this was before he was crucified by the media and rendered unelectable to anything other than dog catcher.
(PS, whatever you think about Gingrich's politics, the horrible press he got was just inexcusible. They made the man out to be the friggin' Antichrist...)
The Venture Star's fuel tanks are a very complicated composite structure, engineered to bear both pressure loads from the cryogenic fuels and some structural loads in the airframe. Unfortunately, during testing a manufacturing error (something to do with the insulating coating that protects the composites from the slushy cryogenic fuels...don't remember if it was the H2 tank or the LOX tank) one of the tanks failed catastrophically. It was a Bad Scene. Nothing that one wouldn't expect in testing (that's why you do testing, after all) but it was a big black eye for the program. Some people thought "Sheesh...if they can't build a gas tank, how the hell are they going to build a space ship?" but those people invariably don't have a clue as to the difficulties in handling cryogenic, and particularly slush, fuel materials.
1) The people who can't afford $50 aren't being charged $50. The tax rate is highly progressive, with the higher incomes bearing vastly more of the tax burden.
2) Poverty problems will NEVER be solved, certainly not by the government. In the mean time, I am all for research that will ultimately get us off this rock. Hopefully before a comet smashes us into oblivion.
Ask yourself where all this telecommunications juju would be without the space program. Then stop crying and pony up the measly $50 it costs each of us to support the space program. It's the best investment most of us will ever make.
Hey, I've got an idea...how about NASA funds itself by giving free launches and just takes a percentage on the profits for telco and TV satellites? Bet they'd make a mint.