You never hear anyone say "Let's cancel all manned flights!" everytime a jet comes crashing down so why stop space exploration because of this? If they do, then those seven astronauts died in vain and that would not only be a shame. It would be an injustice.

While space-age technology is often applied to roller coasters, roller coasters probably aren't terribly applicable to spacecraft.

Stan Checkett's doesn't know what he's doing. At all. He's a lucky man, and he's doing things that haven't been done before, but he's not innovating.

I think, at some point, you'd reach some equilibrium point where the structure needed to house the compressed air would weigh more than that volume of air it houses could actually move. Or something.

I like ramjets, myself.

Lockheed-Martin and NASA had reusable spaceplanes (the X-33 & X-34) set for 2004. But NASA terminated the program early in 2001 because of "technical problems". Now, they have the Space Launch Initiative in place, which is trying to bring us the next generation in spaceflight. I say that since we've lost two of the STS vehicles (albeit 17 years apart), we need something new.

You like shooting down my ideas, don't you? :p ;)

But NASA was really looking at LSM and LIM motors.

Yeah
 

I was discussing this with one of my teammates saturday. Like already stated, the govt will most likely not want to invest in any sort of new craft, whether or not that be based on the existing shuttles. But they are like 20 years old, and there are many new ideas for better shuttles, such as the relaunchables already mentioned. Personally I believe the best path would seem to build a brand new design. But there won't be the money, I blame it on the economy. For such an agency based on new technology, a new type of shuttle should be very appealing.

Right now, the Shuttle is the only way to get more then a few people into space for more then a few days and carry out more then a few tasks.

We can't get by with out that.

So yes, we need a new craft with some heavy lift capacity. Magnum may fit the bill. We also need a way to put bunches of people in space at a time and give them the facilitys to get work done. Right now, thats the Shuttle.

On another note, back when the shuttle was first being made, an unmanned heavy lift version was proposed. This version of the shuttle system would have swapped the orbitor out in favor of what looks like a 'normal' one time use rocket. Instead of having to put heavy things like wings and crew compartments into space along with your payload, you put just payload up. So you can lift more and still recover a fairly good portion of the ship. Boeing acutally made a prototype, which is currently sitting in storage.

-Andy A.

Well actually I have the same idea(steal from rollar coasters) but not with compressed air. Linear synchronous motors can all ready reach speeds in excess of the escape velocity of the earth. Unfournatly getting the timing of that large of a device would be a huge undertaking. Not to mention NASA would probably need to get it's own electric power plant considering the ride.