Exactly right. How did our space program get so screwed up? It used to be an inspiration to young and old. Now its mostly an embarrassment.

All the good stuff is behind a veil of security. Our super secret unmanned orbiter touched down the other day after a two year mission. Our satellites are the envy of the modern world and we have all the technology we'd ever need to send a manned mission to Mars. Doesn't mean we need to do it though. It's freaking expensive.

There are other initiatives that are more forward looking, I'm talking starships, but that is going to be in the theoretical realm for a long time to come, unless a breakthrough in physics changes the paradigm.

The commercialization of space is the appropriate next step. Government funding only goes so far, until we find something out there that makes it worth the expense of getting there and bringing it back, or colonizing it, it will remain a dark cold vacuum.

How about instead of exploring deep space, we take all that money and technology and focus it...

HERE!

ON EARTH, where WE LIVE! :eek:

How about we find a suitable alternative energy source to oil as a start?

Even if they did find a great place for us all to move to, in deep space, I ain't going. :rolleyes:

I'm with you! That debate has been around since the tumultuous 60's, and is largely the reason that the commercialization of space is the only way forward. Private money and enterprise. All those Spanish galleons that are lying at the bottom of the Atlantic came here for profit, albeit for the crown. If all they found were some bananas and mosquitoes, this would still be a country of natives. Spying, communication and geophysical data is the only interest our government has in space, and that's pretty much all we launch. Exploration is now left to unmanned projects that are much cheaper than what we saw with Apollo.

Nice post thanks. Seems like we've been stuck with the same space vehicles and Mach .80ish airliners for the last 50 years. Be nice to see more info like yours published to inspire the brightest young people to get into aero engineering instead of hoping for a career in video game design.

Yeahbut...was it all the same F/O trying to avoid 15% of the Captains? :eek:

Western also had a no fly list, and the guys have told me it worked both ways, in that if one F/O had a whole bunch of Captains on his list, well, the CP would look more closely at the F/O, as he was most likely the real problem. :rolleyes:

I once had an F/O push the power up in the flare, the next day he thought he would be in the office. I told him no, and that he would eventually fly up his own butt. Three years later the NJ State Police arrested him for plotting to kill his father-in-law.........

I've been on here bemoaning the state of aerospace for a long time... who wouldn't love to fly a modern version of the Concorde? The only thing I can see that would drive a new age of commercial aircraft design is a quantum leap in materials technology, which is actually kind of happening now. Until you can satisfy the accountants that a new aircraft design is economically desirable, we'll just keep on with the incremental improvements in current offerings.

One bright spot in our industry is the new weather radar technology that uses multiscan (originally developed for fighters), and combines it with the work of a U of U meteorology professor to create a database of global weather characteristics, then corrects for time of day and season. Metadata basically. It then infers things about the radar returns and displays them accordingly, such as overflight protection, lightning and hail threat, and anvil penetration, and two level turbulence detection. It's called ThreatTrack. One or two of the 739's have it. The company is retrofitting all the 737's with it. The STC for the Airbus is coming soon. I think the 777's are getting it too. I've been trying to see if anyone has flown it yet and what do they think of it...

Google it... WXR 2100 ThreatTrack. Some Rockwell Collins propellerhead started working on it in his basement in Iowa about 15 years ago.

An interesting wrinkle in the upcoming widebody order... possible 777er's... T-Square, do you copy??

http://www.thestreet.com/story/12930...o&cm_ven=YAHOO

When I first checked out as a Delta Capt. one of the last things my IOE Capt. told me was,

"Now you are going to find that not all the azzholes are in the left seat!" ;)

I've only flown with maybe two guys in the right seat that I didn't have a good time with. But I just wrote it off to them having a bad day or recent divorce or something.

Oh, there is one guy who every Capt. and F/O keeps mentioning as being completely worthless. I've only flown with him once, and he was. Not in a bad way, no arguments or disagreements, he just did nothing, nothing at all, in the way of doing his job.

Still, I'd rather fly with him than the more argumentative, thinks he's the Captain, type, of which I've only met one.

I finally told him, "Look if you wanted to be the Captain, you should have BID IT! But since you didn't, just shut your pie hole."

After the trip, I got an email from another Capt. who had just flown with him before my trip, asking me about him. Seems they had a conflict too, but the other Capt. had him removed from the trip when they passed through his SLC base. This was about 12 years ago. He's probably a Capt. by now...I pity his F/O's! :eek: