A Nasa Astronaut And A Russian Cosmonaut

I Have A Hunch The Most Important Reason We're Going To Space Is Not Known Now.

Look At The Aerospace Industry As It Was Just After The Kennedy Talk. We Were Hiring Like Crazy. We Were Trying To Get People Graduated From College. Hey, You Got To Go To The Program. We Need You.

By 1931, After A Few Years' Experience Of Flying Scheduled Airlines, Those Planes Were Operating At Roughly 600 Times The Safety Of The Space Shuttle. I Look At Safety Not In Terms Of Fatalities Per Passenger-mile, But When You Get In And Close The Door, What Is The Risk Of Dying On This Flight?

Nasa's Myriad Failures Are In Many Ways The Natural Consequence Of A Catastrophic Combination Of Bureaucracy, Monopoly, And A Calcifying Aversion To The Kind Of Risk Necessary For Innovation.

At Various Times Over 20 Years, I Did Preliminary Designs For Aircraft Like The Stratolaunch. For That Whole Time I Was Encouraging Us To Do Something That Almost Everyone Else Felt You Could Not Do.