side mounted payloads on rockets make no sense. Side mounted payloads that include living, breathing people are even stupider. Inline rockets with launch-escape towers don't have to worry about falling foam or other debris hitting brittle cutting-edge materials. Spacecraft should be delibrately robust, not fanciful and unnecessarily dangerous.
So, NASA, you proved the point. If enough money gets thrown at the problem, yes, anything can fly. Even pigs and white elephants.
The count as I understand it: one debris strike knocked off a piece of wheel-well tile, one bird got skewered on the ET during liftoff and the huge chunk of foam narrowly missed the right wing after SRB separation. Any other "anomalies"?
I just hope that Discovery makes it back safely. After she returns, let's put the Orbiters in museums for a well deserved rest. It's been a good run, but these birds are done.
If you've read my other posts here, you know my solution to the "ISS needs Shuttle" line.
I'm with you on that - Shuttle return to flight has very little to do with Bush's "Vision" or the eventual settlement of space. The ISS has even less to do with either, yet has been continually sold as "exploring space" since Reagan announced it in 1984. A lot of the technology is new or real old (the J2S is back), excepting any Shuttle-derived HLV. We could have the first flight of a simple capsule-on-SRB launcher if they had stood-down the fleet and O'Keefe had shown some Vision. Pencil Pusher.
I wish Discovery and crew the best flight.
Let's look beyond Shuttle/Station and build a better future. I've posted it before, we need to start thinking of space stations instead of the One Station. We need to find ways to make space pay for this to happen, in doing so we guarantee an unlimited future for humanity and all Life.
You must be new around here. We hit self-referential heights with the infamous "Weclome to the Hellmouth" articles by Jon Katz. That's before he fell in love with an Australian dog or something. There were many articles and posts and they all started mostly refering to themselves, except for when Jon posted more pseudo-relevant spewage.
>Ridiculous. People would still be more than happy to illegally download DVD iso images.
Good point, but I would argue that the availability of the movies as free, legal, lo-res downloads would have a very noticable effect on the piracy of new movie releases. Sure, some would d/l ISO images, but if there are free versions of the files, it will cut down illegal swapping.
My real concern is technical, getting one codec to handle both resolutions of the video file, pretty much on a password.
You IDIOTS!!! How could you damage the Shuttle AGAIN? Griffin talks about culture change and all that gobleddygook, and you foolish padrats drop a window cover on roughly the same place that doomed Columbia? Are you people stupid?
NASA does amazing, absolutely amazing things, witness Deep Impact and the Mars MER rovers. I wish Griffin would just say "it's broke, we're grounding them" and not fly the Shuttles anymore. This is ridiculous, they are outdated and fragile garbage scows. Put the old birds in a museum.
I love Netflix, it makes winter a little more bearable up here. I thought of an online business model that cement their hold on the movies-to-home market.
The first step is a new, DIVX related codec that allows for two viewing resolutions for a movie. The files are distributed by BitTorrent or similiar, the more common the P2P format the better. The user can download any movie from the Netflix library/Torrent, and watch it at some low resolution (say 240x180 or 320x240) for free. If you want to watch the HD resolution version of the movie, put it in your Netflix queue and wait for the HD components of the file to download, then watch. This would kill, absolutely kill, the market for downloading illegal movie content. At the same time it provides an outlet for the end user to experience lo-rez versions of all their favorite movies and gives Netflix an almost-out-of-the-box Internet delivery solution.
I hope someone from Netflix reads Slashdot, because this could give Blockbuster, Amazon, etc, a serious run for da money.
>Well if they could start pumping out more then 5 launches per year, say 10-15 launches per year, then that giant army would be worth it wouldnt you think?
That depends - how much of a brain drain on the private startups and Big Aero would that cause? Also, there is an economic impact. NASA almost refuses to use the EELV (Atlas 5, Delta IV) because of price (they are "Air Force Rockets"), and a new set of NASA rockets takes away from making them cheaper by economy-of-scale. A good argument can be made for starving the EELVs out, anyway, because of their cost. A Shuttle-derived vehicle is not going to be cheap to fly, though. The components are incredibly expensive, the labor involved is vastly more complex than necessary (re: SpaceX, Bigelow and Scaled construction and management) and there is an unbelievable amount of paperwork involved. So, no, increased flight rates on that order might not make it worth it, especially with Russian and startup American rockets that are significantly cheaper.
15 launches/year at current manned-flight budget makes roughly $350million/flight. That is still vastly more expensive than Soyuz or Delta.
Both the single-stick CEV launcher and inline Shuttle-derived HLV are good, useful rocket designs. They have hardware heritage, long experience and the SRBs are one of the safest (if roughest) rockets around.
The only problem is that this continues the massive NASA workforce, which is going to limit the actual implementation of said designs. The standing army needs to be repurposed instead of played to - shutting down the OPF isn't enough. These are massively labor intensive rockets they are creating - they may create as many problems as they solve.
The Shuttle has got to go, I'm glad Dr. Griffin is taking this step.
quant- plz read the replies from others,they all make very valid points.
A surprising amount of space research is done privately: AmSat HAM radio satelites, several Planetary Society devices, the (failed) Boston University TERRIER and the successful UCal/SpaceDev CHiPSAT. Not sure of the numbers, but big terrestrial telescopes are funded by private foundations as well as the Feds. Did you, perhaps, miss the SpaceShipOne flights last year? This is only the start of commercial/private space development. Not to be confused with Military-Industrial Complex space development. All space research could be done this way in future, but it won't carry the same Square Jawed Astronauts Facing the UnKnown(TM) that NASA has been known for. Imagine Shell Oil's Mars-bound crew of prospector-cyborgs as reality TV. No matter what happens at/to NASA, don't expect the Primes to go away, Boeing etc have shown great skill at surviving.
On the government side, our taxes simply are not structured like that - and doing so would cause havoc with the tax code. It'd be cool,but it's not gonna happen. If you want to have direct input into space development you can work for NASA or one of the Primes, buy enough stock in any aerospace company to effect their direction, join Planetary Soc or NSS, or join/found a company with a new space-related product.
Lastly, NASA's $16 billion budget is a rounding error for the Pentagon and Socialist Security.
There is a chance that it will succeed in deploying. If it's lost, it's double the downer: I helped pay for it as a Planetary Society member. PS also developed a Mars Microphone for the MPL (lost), DVD and sundial for current rovers and a balloon-borne "snake" of sensors that never flew. Dammit, I want this one to work, finally.
You asshole trolls. Juvenile little disrespectful twits. Slashdot should do good, not evil. You've been slowly spoiling this site for years, now you are giving all slashdotters a bad name.
Thanks for spoiling an inroad between the new and old media, dickwads.
the article indicates much slower cooling which prevents crystallization. For silicon chips, the process might involve a similiar sonic furnace for melting, then a centrifuge for very controlled crystallization. Elements of semiconductor manufacturing have been tested on the Shuttle, IIRC, and due produce purer chip precursors.
The problem with chip manufacturing in orbit is that every bit of equipment and materiel must be gathered in one orbital slot. With the expenses of modern chip fabs, it would be immensely expensive, even at lower "near future" launch prices. It's the $500 billion question. There might be a way to grow the crystals in space and do the etching on earth?
One interesting point that the article didn't make was that ZBLAN (transparent aluminum!) glass fibers made in space could revolutionize the speed and reliability of Internet and phone backbones. Still has the startup costing issues, but at first brush seems to have less unknowns than a zero-g chip fab.
What I'm wondering is if this technique with the sound waves could be used to make glasses from water? Being able to blow ice bubbles that are pure and have uniform strength could make for an interesting habitat. This paragraph belongs in the the "SF as geek opiate" thread! 8)
No, just a huge fan. I've met Gary at a conference and followed his career. I was at the September SpaceShipOne launch, too. That was FREAKING AWESOME.
I am what you might call a space advocate. Space freak? Space geek! I'm for space development and colonies and all that. I just think that companies like t/space, SpaceDev, SpaceX etc are going to get us there while NASA spins their wheels.
Whore for the private spaceflight industry? Yes, please.
Gary Hudson, the chief scientist at t/Space, has been trying to spark the spaceflight revolution for 30 years. He had a rocket called Conestoga in the 80s that ran into the infamous "brother-in-law problem" at NASA. He was also the driving force behind another Mojave airport first: the Roton demonstrator. Now he's back with the world's most famous aircraft designer and a bunch of other people from the space activist community.
Burt needs no introduction: he's da man. Burt builds the coolest planes in the world and has finally started building spaceships.
So, t/space has been doing droptests, excellent! They have a great capsule demo and seem to be trying to stretch their funding as far as possible. I'm pretty sure they said that the "CXV" was proposed specifically outside the CEV RFP, because they refuse to fill out that much extra paperwork. You can see what Mr. Hudson was working on in the early 00's here: http://hmx.com/ The pdf is his proposal for a capsule (manned/cargo) for the old Alternative Access to Station program, gives a good idea of where the CXV's heritage is.
t/space is an amazing team. If they can keep the funding coming, they will deliver on this craft.
wow, you're intelligent. That is what it boils down to with the anti-space, anti-progress, anti-tech crowd. Fuck space, right? Go live in a cave, AC. You are in the "get out of the way" part of LEAD, FOLLOW OR GET OUT OF THE WAY!
>In my experience, people never refer to food from South America as "Spanish" cuisine. It's usually either Mexican or Salvadoran or some Americanized (in a good way! Tex-Mex or California) equivalent. If you say "Spanish food" you mean paella and tapas. Not burritos or tacos or enchiladas or chimichangas. Not guacamole.
Right! That's because American Indians were eating burritos and tacos for hundreds of years before the Conquistadors arrived. Aztecs, Maya, Hopi, etc all have similar foods in their native diets. See "Indian Givers" by Weatherford for more. Native America produced corn, potato, tomato, chili, peanut, pineapple, amaranth, quinoa and many other "basic" foodstuffs.
Expression, formerly by Creature House, is an amazing image package. The "natural media" capabilities it has are combined with infinitely editable vectors, very responisive. You can create extemely complex images with a few lines. CH had an (IIRC) in-house only version that did animation using the same engines. I'd give my CTRL pinky for updated software like that, with the animation. Definitely looking forward to playing with Acrylic. Thanks Uncle Bill. (c'mon, credit where credit is due)
I'd eat roasted Gungans, anything to SHUT JAR-JAR UP! I hear they taste like chicken.
Why all these "science of..." articles? Star Wars and Star Trek are space opera. You want semi-realistic science fiction? Babylon 5. The only made-up aspect of B5 was the jump gates - no fake grav on human ships, realistic space physics and space marines. Nuff said.
I have to disagree. You might argue that atheists have a religion (faith that there is no god), but that doesn't hold for agnostics or more broadly even Buddhists. Agnosticism is a belief in provability - reality and nature are provable, if a god/supernatural can be proven, an agnostic would believe. Essentially, faith is not enough.
Buddhists don't believe in gods, neccessarily, despite the apparent worshipping of idols. it is a belief system based on personal behavior and righteous interaction with others. They revere the Buddha, but don't think of him as sky/creator god, but an enlightened teacher.
People that claim 'science' or 'darwin' is a religion don't understand the scientific process nor what constitutes a religion.
The Russian Space Agency, the nominal owner of that part of ISS, is not funded by our taxes. Well, not directly. I didn't say anything about a NA$A funded project - I said that there were commercial opportunities to undercut the old ways of doing things. An american company offering a full-service "life support" module to RKS doesn't need any NASA involvement.
Don't matter - Bigelow Aerospace is about to shake up the whole "space station" terrain.
Elektron is a standard unit on Russian space stations, Mir and Salyuts (iirc) used them as well. They break all the time. Krikalev and the crew before his (Ciao and Sharipov) all have spent tons of time working on both the Elektrons onboard. One broke, they put in the other, it has broken again. It seems that they spend a lot of time stripping and repairing Elektron units.
Definitely time for a new, more robust O2 generator. Not enough time in the interim to build a new style of generator, but there is a mid-term opportunity for one.
The Russians will be sending either parts or a new unit with the next Progress supply craft.
On manned flights, Elon has specifically said that SpaceX's longterm goal is providing lift for passengers. He apparently wants a piece of the pie when Bigelow's Nautilus stations start flying.
Slashdot Mirror
side mounted payloads on rockets make no sense. Side mounted payloads that include living, breathing people are even stupider. Inline rockets with launch-escape towers don't have to worry about falling foam or other debris hitting brittle cutting-edge materials. Spacecraft should be delibrately robust, not fanciful and unnecessarily dangerous.
So, NASA, you proved the point. If enough money gets thrown at the problem, yes, anything can fly. Even pigs and white elephants.
The count as I understand it: one debris strike knocked off a piece of wheel-well tile, one bird got skewered on the ET during liftoff and the huge chunk of foam narrowly missed the right wing after SRB separation. Any other "anomalies"?
I just hope that Discovery makes it back safely. After she returns, let's put the Orbiters in museums for a well deserved rest. It's been a good run, but these birds are done.
If you've read my other posts here, you know my solution to the "ISS needs Shuttle" line.
Josh
I'm with you on that - Shuttle return to flight has very little to do with Bush's "Vision" or the eventual settlement of space. The ISS has even less to do with either, yet has been continually sold as "exploring space" since Reagan announced it in 1984. A lot of the technology is new or real old (the J2S is back), excepting any Shuttle-derived HLV. We could have the first flight of a simple capsule-on-SRB launcher if they had stood-down the fleet and O'Keefe had shown some Vision. Pencil Pusher.
I wish Discovery and crew the best flight.
Let's look beyond Shuttle/Station and build a better future. I've posted it before, we need to start thinking of space stations instead of the One Station. We need to find ways to make space pay for this to happen, in doing so we guarantee an unlimited future for humanity and all Life.
We need a first generation of pioneers.
You must be new around here. We hit self-referential heights with the infamous "Weclome to the Hellmouth" articles by Jon Katz. That's before he fell in love with an Australian dog or something. There were many articles and posts and they all started mostly refering to themselves, except for when Jon posted more pseudo-relevant spewage.
josh
>Ridiculous. People would still be more than happy to illegally download DVD iso images.
Good point, but I would argue that the availability of the movies as free, legal, lo-res downloads would have a very noticable effect on the piracy of new movie releases. Sure, some would d/l ISO images, but if there are free versions of the files, it will cut down illegal swapping.
My real concern is technical, getting one codec to handle both resolutions of the video file, pretty much on a password.
You IDIOTS!!! How could you damage the Shuttle AGAIN? Griffin talks about culture change and all that gobleddygook, and you foolish padrats drop a window cover on roughly the same place that doomed Columbia? Are you people stupid?
NASA does amazing, absolutely amazing things, witness Deep Impact and the Mars MER rovers. I wish Griffin would just say "it's broke, we're grounding them" and not fly the Shuttles anymore. This is ridiculous, they are outdated and fragile garbage scows. Put the old birds in a museum.
Josh, pissed off.
I love Netflix, it makes winter a little more bearable up here. I thought of an online business model that cement their hold on the movies-to-home market.
The first step is a new, DIVX related codec that allows for two viewing resolutions for a movie. The files are distributed by BitTorrent or similiar, the more common the P2P format the better. The user can download any movie from the Netflix library/Torrent, and watch it at some low resolution (say 240x180 or 320x240) for free. If you want to watch the HD resolution version of the movie, put it in your Netflix queue and wait for the HD components of the file to download, then watch. This would kill, absolutely kill, the market for downloading illegal movie content. At the same time it provides an outlet for the end user to experience lo-rez versions of all their favorite movies and gives Netflix an almost-out-of-the-box Internet delivery solution.
I hope someone from Netflix reads Slashdot, because this could give Blockbuster, Amazon, etc, a serious run for da money.
Josh
>Well if they could start pumping out more then 5 launches per year, say 10-15 launches per year, then that giant army would be worth it wouldnt you think?
That depends - how much of a brain drain on the private startups and Big Aero would that cause? Also, there is an economic impact. NASA almost refuses to use the EELV (Atlas 5, Delta IV) because of price (they are "Air Force Rockets"), and a new set of NASA rockets takes away from making them cheaper by economy-of-scale. A good argument can be made for starving the EELVs out, anyway, because of their cost. A Shuttle-derived vehicle is not going to be cheap to fly, though. The components are incredibly expensive, the labor involved is vastly more complex than necessary (re: SpaceX, Bigelow and Scaled construction and management) and there is an unbelievable amount of paperwork involved. So, no, increased flight rates on that order might not make it worth it, especially with Russian and startup American rockets that are significantly cheaper.
15 launches/year at current manned-flight budget makes roughly $350million/flight. That is still vastly more expensive than Soyuz or Delta.
Both the single-stick CEV launcher and inline Shuttle-derived HLV are good, useful rocket designs. They have hardware heritage, long experience and the SRBs are one of the safest (if roughest) rockets around.
The only problem is that this continues the massive NASA workforce, which is going to limit the actual implementation of said designs. The standing army needs to be repurposed instead of played to - shutting down the OPF isn't enough. These are massively labor intensive rockets they are creating - they may create as many problems as they solve.
The Shuttle has got to go, I'm glad Dr. Griffin is taking this step.
Josh
quant- plz read the replies from others,they all make very valid points.
A surprising amount of space research is done privately: AmSat HAM radio satelites, several Planetary Society devices, the (failed) Boston University TERRIER and the successful UCal/SpaceDev CHiPSAT. Not sure of the numbers, but big terrestrial telescopes are funded by private foundations as well as the Feds. Did you, perhaps, miss the SpaceShipOne flights last year? This is only the start of commercial/private space development. Not to be confused with Military-Industrial Complex space development. All space research could be done this way in future, but it won't carry the same Square Jawed Astronauts Facing the UnKnown(TM) that NASA has been known for. Imagine Shell Oil's Mars-bound crew of prospector-cyborgs as reality TV. No matter what happens at/to NASA, don't expect the Primes to go away, Boeing etc have shown great skill at surviving.
On the government side, our taxes simply are not structured like that - and doing so would cause havoc with the tax code. It'd be cool,but it's not gonna happen. If you want to have direct input into space development you can work for NASA or one of the Primes, buy enough stock in any aerospace company to effect their direction, join Planetary Soc or NSS, or join/found a company with a new space-related product.
Lastly, NASA's $16 billion budget is a rounding error for the Pentagon and Socialist Security.
Josh
There is a chance that it will succeed in deploying. If it's lost, it's double the downer: I helped pay for it as a Planetary Society member. PS also developed a Mars Microphone for the MPL (lost), DVD and sundial for current rovers and a balloon-borne "snake" of sensors that never flew. Dammit, I want this one to work, finally.
ad astra!
You asshole trolls. Juvenile little disrespectful twits. Slashdot should do good, not evil. You've been slowly spoiling this site for years, now you are giving all slashdotters a bad name.
Thanks for spoiling an inroad between the new and old media, dickwads.
Josh
the article indicates much slower cooling which prevents crystallization. For silicon chips, the process might involve a similiar sonic furnace for melting, then a centrifuge for very controlled crystallization. Elements of semiconductor manufacturing have been tested on the Shuttle, IIRC, and due produce purer chip precursors.
The problem with chip manufacturing in orbit is that every bit of equipment and materiel must be gathered in one orbital slot. With the expenses of modern chip fabs, it would be immensely expensive, even at lower "near future" launch prices. It's the $500 billion question. There might be a way to grow the crystals in space and do the etching on earth?
One interesting point that the article didn't make was that ZBLAN (transparent aluminum!) glass fibers made in space could revolutionize the speed and reliability of Internet and phone backbones. Still has the startup costing issues, but at first brush seems to have less unknowns than a zero-g chip fab.
What I'm wondering is if this technique with the sound waves could be used to make glasses from water? Being able to blow ice bubbles that are pure and have uniform strength could make for an interesting habitat. This paragraph belongs in the the "SF as geek opiate" thread! 8)
Josh
No, just a huge fan. I've met Gary at a conference and followed his career. I was at the September SpaceShipOne launch, too. That was FREAKING AWESOME.
I am what you might call a space advocate. Space freak? Space geek! I'm for space development and colonies and all that. I just think that companies like t/space, SpaceDev, SpaceX etc are going to get us there while NASA spins their wheels.
Whore for the private spaceflight industry? Yes, please.
Josh
LOL! Elwood you are to funny! I only do sarcasm with smilies at the end!
Indeed, it IS Mayan food. And Mixtec, O'Odham, Aztec, Mochi, etc. We owe the absolute greatest debt to our ancestors for their crops.
Peace,
Josh
Gary Hudson, the chief scientist at t/Space, has been trying to spark the spaceflight revolution for 30 years. He had a rocket called Conestoga in the 80s that ran into the infamous "brother-in-law problem" at NASA. He was also the driving force behind another Mojave airport first: the Roton demonstrator. Now he's back with the world's most famous aircraft designer and a bunch of other people from the space activist community.
Burt needs no introduction: he's da man. Burt builds the coolest planes in the world and has finally started building spaceships.
So, t/space has been doing droptests, excellent! They have a great capsule demo and seem to be trying to stretch their funding as far as possible. I'm pretty sure they said that the "CXV" was proposed specifically outside the CEV RFP, because they refuse to fill out that much extra paperwork. You can see what Mr. Hudson was working on in the early 00's here: http://hmx.com/ The pdf is his proposal for a capsule (manned/cargo) for the old Alternative Access to Station program, gives a good idea of where the CXV's heritage is.
t/space is an amazing team. If they can keep the funding coming, they will deliver on this craft.
Josh
wow, you're intelligent. That is what it boils down to with the anti-space, anti-progress, anti-tech crowd. Fuck space, right? Go live in a cave, AC. You are in the "get out of the way" part of LEAD, FOLLOW OR GET OUT OF THE WAY!
OMG! It's 2am and I fell for a troll.
>In my experience, people never refer to food from South America as "Spanish" cuisine. It's usually either Mexican or Salvadoran or some Americanized (in a good way! Tex-Mex or California) equivalent. If you say "Spanish food" you mean paella and tapas. Not burritos or tacos or enchiladas or chimichangas. Not guacamole.
Right! That's because American Indians were eating burritos and tacos for hundreds of years before the Conquistadors arrived. Aztecs, Maya, Hopi, etc all have similar foods in their native diets. See "Indian Givers" by Weatherford for more. Native America produced corn, potato, tomato, chili, peanut, pineapple, amaranth, quinoa and many other "basic" foodstuffs.
jOSH
No, thanks for releasing the beta. I'm looking forward to it, like Mech Commander 2 (also someone else's hard work).
Expression, formerly by Creature House, is an amazing image package. The "natural media" capabilities it has are combined with infinitely editable vectors, very responisive. You can create extemely complex images with a few lines. CH had an (IIRC) in-house only version that did animation using the same engines. I'd give my CTRL pinky for updated software like that, with the animation. Definitely looking forward to playing with Acrylic. Thanks Uncle Bill. (c'mon, credit where credit is due)
Josh
I'd eat roasted Gungans, anything to SHUT JAR-JAR UP! I hear they taste like chicken.
Why all these "science of..." articles? Star Wars and Star Trek are space opera. You want semi-realistic science fiction? Babylon 5. The only made-up aspect of B5 was the jump gates - no fake grav on human ships, realistic space physics and space marines. Nuff said.
> Everyone has a religion.
I have to disagree. You might argue that atheists have a religion (faith that there is no god), but that doesn't hold for agnostics or more broadly even Buddhists. Agnosticism is a belief in provability - reality and nature are provable, if a god/supernatural can be proven, an agnostic would believe. Essentially, faith is not enough.
Buddhists don't believe in gods, neccessarily, despite the apparent worshipping of idols. it is a belief system based on personal behavior and righteous interaction with others. They revere the Buddha, but don't think of him as sky/creator god, but an enlightened teacher.
People that claim 'science' or 'darwin' is a religion don't understand the scientific process nor what constitutes a religion.
josh
Those perverts are gonna go choke the chicken!!
Josh
PS. Isn't this old hat? Like Howard Rheingold, Jaron Lanier and the whole "teledildonics" thing from the early 90s?
The Russian Space Agency, the nominal owner of that part of ISS, is not funded by our taxes. Well, not directly. I didn't say anything about a NA$A funded project - I said that there were commercial opportunities to undercut the old ways of doing things. An american company offering a full-service "life support" module to RKS doesn't need any NASA involvement.
Don't matter - Bigelow Aerospace is about to shake up the whole "space station" terrain.
Elektron is a standard unit on Russian space stations, Mir and Salyuts (iirc) used them as well. They break all the time. Krikalev and the crew before his (Ciao and Sharipov) all have spent tons of time working on both the Elektrons onboard. One broke, they put in the other, it has broken again. It seems that they spend a lot of time stripping and repairing Elektron units.
Definitely time for a new, more robust O2 generator. Not enough time in the interim to build a new style of generator, but there is a mid-term opportunity for one.
The Russians will be sending either parts or a new unit with the next Progress supply craft.
josh
On manned flights, Elon has specifically said that SpaceX's longterm goal is providing lift for passengers. He apparently wants a piece of the pie when Bigelow's Nautilus stations start flying.
josh