From: utzoo!decvax!cca!POURNE@MIT-MC@sri-unix Newsgroups: net.space Title: l-5 Article-I.D.: sri-unix.3225 Posted: Sat Sep 11 01:10:13 1982 Received: Sun Sep 12 02:50:02 1982 From: Jerry E. PournelleThe gentleman who declined to renew his membership is welcome to his opinion. Others have different views. Ones with different views on the L-5 Board include Heinlein, Kantrowitz, and a number of aerospace managers like Gordon Woodcock of Boeing. Some with different views who are members include astronauts and company presidents (Fred Haise of apollo 13 was guest of honor at the L-5 convention last spring; Hans Mark of Nasa was keynote speaker). Re: SSI of Houston and "rational approaches." I am not certain I understand what engineering contribution launching a miniuteman upper stage makes as opposed to trying to develop a cheap liquid rocket. Certainly using a minuteman upper stage is more rational if all you want to do is get your rocket off the pad and have it splash in the Gulf of Mexico instead of scaring the alligator. Gary Hudson who did the Percheron was at the World SF convention recently and we had a long discussion about the "new" and the old SSI approaches. It may be the new approach is "more rational" as said in the recent space digest, but it is not utterly obvious.