Spaceport Development Picks Up Steam In Texas 116
RocketAcademy writes "The Lone Star State is moving to become a leader in spaceport development.
The Houston Airport System is officially moving ahead with plans to turn Ellington Airport, near NASA's Johnson Space Center, into an FAA-licensed commercial spaceport. The airport system has completed a feasibility study for turning the field into a spaceport for suborbital spacecraft such as Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two and XCOR's Lynx. In the longer term, spacecraft could link Houston to Singapore in as little as three hours, according to airport system director Mario Diaz.
Meanwhile, state Representative Rene Oliveira (D-Brownsville) introduced a bill that would allow county commissioners to close a local beach for launches from the proposed SpaceX launch site in Cameron County. The bill is part of a flood of spaceport-related legislation that has been introduced recently in the Texas legislature."
Houston to Singapore In As Little As Three Hours.. (Score:5, Funny)
(Line for the 10-mile-high club forms to the rear of the craft.)
"and thank-you for riding Virgin Galactic. We hope you'll come again."
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10 miles is only 52,800 feet, which isn't terribly high. Heck, a lot of airliners these days are pushing that regularly. 100 mile high, now...
Re:Houston to Singapore In As Little As Three Hour (Score:4, Informative)
Because if you want the money to flow back to the "masses" you better find something interesting for those "rich bastards" to spend it on, rather than having it stagnate in some bank account. Money is most effective when it is in use, lubricating the economy engine.
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Seriously, why on earth does anyone need to travel to another part of the world any faster than a private jet can already do???
Because sometimes really expensive shit needs to be done right now. Putting it off for a half a day or more can cost a lot of money. Maybe your boss needs to sign off in person on a big deal. Maybe you need a one of a kind part delivered to keep a critical system up.
Whether there's enough of that sort of need to support a suborbital travel industry at this time is a big, unanswered question.
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Better be a pretty small part.
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Better be a pretty small part.
Sounds like any such suborbital transportation system would be moving several tons of payload at a time. It wouldn't have to be that small.
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That Texas is going so hard for this business is interesting because New Mexico built a whole space port near White Sands just for Virgin Galactic and other enterprises - then the state legislature pretty much bungled it. VG has been talking about ducking out of their contract since NM hasn't met their obligations.
With Texas going whole hog, it looks like "oops" for New Mexico...
Science (Score:2, Funny)
Science, shame they don't teach that in Texas schools.
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Hey guess what? I am a Texas high school student and I am currently doing chemistry homework.
Re:Science (Score:5, Funny)
Hey guess what? I am a Texas high school student and I am currently doing chemistry homework.
No you're not, you are wasting time on /.
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But your doing it for Jesus, aren't you.
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That, and it's not theft only if you're a business and bring it to Texas.
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While the state might not do so well in math and science test comparisons compared to other states, the state excels at making many things available to students that are rare if non-existent elsewhere. The right to a good education is in the state constitution (which also asks for the foundation of "first-class" state universities: University of Texas and Texas A&M), and implements a very broad wealth redist
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Re:Science (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
There's also the
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there's big oil, patent lawsuits and guns... what else could texans possibly want?
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Football is certainly a popular sport in Texas both for players and spectators. Where I lived it was definitely thought of as culturally important to a decent number of students, but that of course varied widely across the student body. And it was well funded with a nice field, good equipment, etc. On the other hand other activities didn't seem to suffer from lack of funding. I was in Academic Decathlon, the chess club, debate, and the tennis team. We had art classes, theater, band, orchestra, soccer, lacro
Re:Science (Score:4, Informative)
What you and everyone else is missing is that Texas is burdened with educating hundreds of thousands, if not more, illegal aliens. In fact, Kids come across the border to attend our school. Why? Fuck if I know, but the courts said we have to let them in for some reason.
So now you have to feed them, hire Bi-Lingual teachers, and then deal with the inevitable gang problems. Just look at San Antonio ISD.
The district my kids went to is rated tops in the nation in all the math and science scores and guess what? 99.9% of the kids that go there speak English and are not in gangs. If you think I should pony up more tax dollars to make sure a bunch of illegals on the border get a nice stadium and band instruments, then I think you should too.
As for Football, aside from the initial capital investments, the programs are run mostly on ticket sales and other fund raisers. Same thing with the Bands.
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The sports games (in theory) pay for themselves in various ways.
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I get that it's a joke, but I'm really tired of hearing people demean Texas' education system. While the state might not do so well in math and science test comparisons compared to other states, the state excels at making many things available to students that are rare if non-existent elsewhere. The right to a good education is in the state constitution (which also asks for the foundation of "first-class" state universities: University of Texas and Texas A&M), and implements a very broad wealth redistribution scheme (Robin hood plan), which makes sure that even very poor school districts can pay for AP classes, music electives, sports facilities, the works. Children who show potential are given chances from a very early age to enter advanced-placement courses, and many efforts are made by teachers to identify children who can enter these. I honestly think that the low rankings of Texas in Math and Science comparisons is more due to demographics than the school system, and in more general rankings the school fares much better. In any case, it goes to great lengths to let children broaden their horizons with their peers, independent of social class.
Straight from good points headlong into the racism we tend to expect from Texans.
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Demographics was a bad choice of word. I mainly meant the fact that Texas is super poor(5th poorest in the nation by poverty rate), and there's a pretty well documented correlation between poverty and educational results.
Fair enough. Criticism withdrawn.
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add to that, if you're a resident of texas, and you join the military, your college education is free (at least to the state schools, honorable discharge required). And that's on top of your federal gi bill benefits.
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Eh, teaching is overrated. When you have a GDP that is sufficient to land you between Australia and Russia, you can afford to simply import the folks with book learnin'. See: NASA.
Of course, that doesn't stop some of us from getting one of those edjumacations. When I wanted to study Computer Science some more (instead of following up on one of the three separate internships I had in the space industry as an undergrad), I ended up pursuing my graduate coursework at a major Texas university, for instance. Now
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If you keep your extra battery under your stetson it's easier to balance.
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Cold fusion exists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation [wikipedia.org] - there's even articles citing NASA Langley types talking about how they think its a reasonable research but they don't for whatever politics or funding issues.
The difference between this and cold fusion though is that this is cheap to experiment on. Copper and microwave frequency transmitters are not that expensive. 4.5 ghz at what power I don't know exactly though. But it doesn't look like a lot and from white papers I read on their we
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Equating cold fusion to an emdrive and a scam makes stating cold fusion as existing relevant. Most people put it off out of hand. I put it here for people to do further research. There's plenty of debate as to whether cold fusion is feasible as a power generating technology. Its not out of the race yet. I believe the same thing about emdrive.
If your refering to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive [wikipedia.org]
It doesn't violate the conservation of momentum because it is speculated to be an OPEN SYSTEM.
I am putting more
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Also see the wiki talk page for more debate about the articles in question.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:EmDrive [wikipedia.org]
"Can someone edit the analysis page, it was blatently written by someone who hasn't read either the New Scientist article or the more recent Eureka article. It doesn't violate either the conservation of momentum or energy, as it uses energy!
Every article on it specifically states that when the equipment accelerates it loses thrust. If anyone would like to check, this happens with every form of
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The photon emission of that device can't possibly produce enough momentum to create the observed thrust. The device has not been tested in a vacuum chamber, and no, a hermetically sealed box full of air doesn't mean it wouldn't move (you can swim around in a closed box full of water, for example).
You might also ask why it's got such off-kilter marketing. It's a bad thruster, but implied it would be great at levitating something that didn't accelerate? Why is that not the headline element - reactionlessly ap
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It is reactionless. It does not use reaction mass (i.e. momentum) to produce thrust. This is a problem, because it violates conservation of momentum.
That is what a reactionless drive is - for example, technically a car is a kind of reactionless drive, in the sense that it does not expel reaction mass to produce forward momentum. But a car conserves momentum because it pushes on the ground behind it.
Textbook physics is textbook physics for a reason and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The
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This is the best response and I to wonder this same thing.
I can't say that the drive is a scam flat out based on textbook physics though and thats mostly what I have been attempting to respond to.
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It doesn't violate the conservation of momentum because it is speculated to be an OPEN SYSTEM.
With no mechanism for coupling the EM drive to the rest of the universe. Hence, why it breaks conservation of momentum.
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This drive is a scam and violates laws of physics.
the laws of physics don't "govern" anything... they are merely generalized observations
i'm not saying that they aren't useful; they can predict behavior under the limited conditions for which the laws were based
you're just one of those sheeple who think because you read something in a physics book then it must be true
there are probably more sheeple that think jesus walked on water and was the son of god because they read it in a book
keep drinking the religious kool aid... fool
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i'm not saying that they aren't useful; they can predict behavior under the limited conditions for which the laws were based
Those "limited conditions" happen to be all of reality. We have yet to observe any sort of phenomena that violates the basic conservation laws. If the EM Drive was a true violation of conservation of momentum, then we would have seen the effect elsewhere first. It's not the first combination of EM and general relativity, for example. Particle colliders would probably see the effect as well.
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Not to defend this drive or even enter into discussion on it, but...
If the EM Drive was a true violation of conservation of momentum, then we would have seen the effect elsewhere first
This statement is disingenuous. You could make it about every discovery.
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If the EM Drive was a true violation of conservation of momentum, then we would have seen the effect elsewhere first
This statement is disingenuous. You could make it about every discovery.
And you would typically be in error to do so. Particle colliders would be where a violation of the conservation of momentum would be seen first.
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Those "limited conditions" happen to be all of reality
you must be the smartest person on earth if you can qualify that
either that or you're a religious sheep and you really have no idea what goes on inside a black hole or the other side of the universe or whether string theory is correct or whether assumed conditions will remain the same forever or that there couldn't ever possibly be any exceptions
there must be some good shit in that kool aid
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We may not understand the math for this, but I am surprised some people out there haven't dumped a few thousand dollars into the tech to make it more efficient and powerful.
The math for the EM drive doesn't work because it violates conservation of momentum. There's no lack of understanding here.
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That's fine, I will not argue that. I will argue though that fire, the wheel, and a lot of chemistry was done without science as pseudoscience. Just because we don't fully understand something doesn't mean it cannot be harnessed and used and experimented on.
To dismiss something because it doesn't fit our understanding and call it a scam is short sited. And frustrating to people who are curious.
Anyway I thought I would be a smart ass and bring it up here. To see if I got any more informative replies, then it
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To dismiss something because it doesn't fit our understanding and call it a scam is short sited. And frustrating to people who are curious.
What "something"? There's no evidence or theoretical backing for the claim that the EM drive does anything. It's worth noting here that no one has seen a violation of conservation of momentum. Every such case where someone claims they have observed such turns to be observation error or fraud.
I'm not even sure we can bring in the conservation of momentum as an issue because of how it is claimed to work.
There's no mechanism by which momentum can be transferred from the system to the outside world, but the EM drive needs that in order to work.
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"What "something"? There's no evidence or theoretical backing for the claim that the EM drive does anything. It's worth noting here that no one has seen a violation of conservation of momentum. Every such case where someone claims they have observed such turns to be observation error or fraud."
There is evidence, there's a video and a peer reviewed white paper translated to english.
"There's no mechanism by which momentum can be transferred from the system to the outside world, but the EM drive needs that in
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There is evidence, there's a video and a peer reviewed white paper translated to english.
Evidence distinguishes between different hypotheses. These would exist whether they are right, wrong, or fraudulent.
"There's no mechanism by which momentum can be transferred from the system to the outside world, but the EM drive needs that in order to work."
What if it works differently then you suppose it could?
Well, it can't work the way I "suppose" (which really is the way the EM drive creators suppose, I might add). So some degree of actually working would be an improvement.
It's not too much to ask for such a claim that first, someone actually comes up with a working model that makes sense as well as a solid experimental demonstration. For example, that was done with Mach Lorentz Thrusters [wikipedia.org] (MLT
Re:Space ports are nice and all. (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not develop this technology so everyone can use their microwaves and a copper cone to have a spaceport in their driveway?
Yes indeed .. why not? That's one of those quintessential questions. It's like the question "Why aren't we all driving around in cars powered by Tesla's black box" or "Why are we still burning fossil fuels when the problem of abundant energy was solved nearly a hundred years ago" or "Why are we all working 40 hour weeks when there's enough automation to work 12 hour weeks" or "Why are we clinging to a dying monetary system that serves no purpose" or "Why do people starve to death on a daily basis when there's no need for it" or "What's causing the current global environmental changes" or "Why does religion have such an improperly powerful position in society" or "Why do people raising valid question get modded as trolls".
Take the red pill.
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I'm not sure I can identify the sarcasm, if any, in your post.
But would you care to elaborate on how, and I quote, "the problem of abundant energy was solved nearly a hundred years ago"?
With all the stolen businesses from other states (Score:1)
It only accelerates the speed of cattle rustling of businesses to Texas(sans workers unfortunately) while making sure it is too expensive for regular people to use it.
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It's not our fault... (Score:3)
...that other states keep driving business out with higher taxes, more bureaucratic red tape, burdensome regulations, and corrupt closed shop union cronyism.
This is why California keeps driving businesses to Texas [battleswarmblog.com].
Also, Texas now ranks higher than California in standardized test scores [washingtonexaminer.com], both in aggregate, and in each demographic ethnic group [typepad.com].
For a more in-depth discussion of these points (with numerous statistics to back it up), see Chuck DeVore's The Texas Model: Prosperity in the Lone Star State and Less [amazon.com]
Yet Texas's(and others) government is complicit (Score:2)
While tax policy might provide an easy out if one of the states involved is California, replace it with a state not so far off the chart. The governments of these business-sycophantic states cannot create new businesses on their own but rely on other states to create and grow them. The mentality in these states is that if you do not own a business, you must be denied freedom.
When a state government actively pursues businesses, they not only remove jobs from a state (usually with as much stealth as possibl
You seem to hail from an alternate dimension (Score:2)
One where:
Valero Energy Corporation
Dell Computer Corporation
Sysco
Enterprise Products
Plains All American Pipeline
Tesoro
etc.
were never founded in Texas.
And the rest of your post? [[Citation Needed]]
No, just saw it happen between my state and GA. (Score:2)
The balance of my point still stands. Those kind of states rely on deceptively acquired businesses(proven through the actions of the Economic "Development" Board) while providing no substantial promotion for workers to move to a state with worse working conditions.
The proof is in the types of jobs offered, the general hostility towards questioning business as well as the general Southern hostility to worker representation outside of employer-formed groups such as contractors and staffing agencies.
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After all, you just want the freedom to dictate conversation, and since your words are so much better than anybody else's, you truly deserve that power.
Thank you for being so reasonable. Many of you carbetbagging yankees simply don't understand how precious my opinions are, but I respect you for being one of the few to admit it.
Thanks for convincing me not to drink the Texas Tea.
So long as you don't stop eating Texas beef stew [imgur.com] or Texas pizza.
Maybe you should learn some humility.
You're right. I forgive you.
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do you think chuck norris should learn some humility too?
*punches you*
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Texas has the 2nd largest population in the country (behind only California).
Texas has the 2nd largest economy (again, behind California, and only slightly), larger than most independent countries.
Texas is one of the few states that contributes more to the federal wallet than it recieves.
Texas has a top notch education system that utilizes wealth redistribution (thats what it is even if not called that) ensures the poorest school districts still get adequate funding.
On top of that it has many state run aid
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Good to see that bigotry is alive and well on slashdot.
Re:Now you can leave Texas at Mach 10. (Score:4, Insightful)
Which explains why the state recently gained additional seats in the House of Representatives. It's growth rate is outpacing the national average by a decent amount since people are moving into it at a pretty rapid rate. And, honestly, having moved here a little over a decade ago, I can see why. Sure, there's some truth to the various stereotypes, but having lived for roughly equal amounts of time in California, Florida, and Texas, I'd pick Texas over the other two any day. The people are nicer, you get a LOT more bang for your buck in the housing market, and there's high demand for folks with the sorts of skills the commenters here at Slashdot have. You'll deal with crazy people anywhere you go, but at least the Texas crazies are pleasant enough to be around.
Cronyism at its finest (Score:1)
Since it's for the few and does not cater to the many, it's just cronyism done in the traditional Texas way.
Re:Cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed! How can they possibly justify suggesting that a large-ish military/NASA airport within spitting distance of Johnson Space Center be used as a spaceport?! Why, next thing you know, they'll try and pass it off as common sense. One person I met had the gall to suggest that because Houston is one of the largest urban centers in the nation, is within a short driving distance of 3 of the top 5 seaports in the nation (which might make transporting parts for these craft easier), and has a high concentration of individuals connected to the space industry, it makes sense to put a starport there. How dare there! Harumph.
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WARNING: A Texan's (and especially a Houstonian's) definition "a short driving distance" may not correspond with common definitions found elsewhere in the country.
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Quite true. It's worth pointing out that I was thinking in terms of cargo shipping rather than passenger transport with that particular point, hence why I added that parenthetical statement above. Obviously, a 4-5 hour drive from Corpus Christi to Houston (which is the most distant of the 3 seaports I was referring to) is more than pretty much anyone would consider a "short drive" (even a Houstonian!), but if you're comparing it against a typical drive that a flatbed semi would have to take to deliver a lar
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In 2010 there were close to 75 launches worldwide, of which about 30 were commercial launches.
That said, with the rapid pace of commercial space development, it's likely that we'll see new vehicles in the "near future" that could start to deliver on the promise of passenger spacecraft and the like, so preparations should be made with that eventuality in mind. Even so, we're several years away, at a minimum, and in the meantime Ellington is still being actively used by NASA and the military, so it's not like
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if it weren't for baikonur (or however it's spelt) and the russians, there would be much less (not to mention there would be no space stations to visit either)
the russians basically ARE the global space industry, with only a few minor exceptions
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the texan patent lawyers will be all over that
Underutilized spaceports (Score:3)
New Mexico already was screwed by Virgin Galactic on this. The state built Spaceport America [spaceportamerica.com] for Virgin. Then Virgin demanded a better deal, and got it. Once in a while Armadillo Aerospace launches some test rocket from there. The terminal building is used for bus tours.
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to be honest, what were they thinking putting one in New Mexico in the first place? int he future, it might be a great spot. but right now? its too far from its theoretical customer base. and what were they thinking building it before they even had a businees plan/model to make money from? Spaceport America was a cool idea, but it lacked a lot of common sense.
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except virgin galactic doesnt use vertically launched rockets.
they use a mothership that drop launches a reusable spaceplane.
as such, they can launch from pretty much anywhere, and the need of a clear "ballistically downrange" area is unneeded.
and again: they are in the middle of nowhere, many many miles away from the things and people they intend to serve. my other post covers it better, but Spaceport America is absolutely stupidly located. they need to be co-located with existing infrastructure until the
New Mexico Spaceport? (Score:2)
Designed, built and operated by the New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA), Spaceport America is nearing completion of the first phase of construction, which includes basic operational infrastructure such as an airfield, launch pads, terminal / hangar facility, emergency response capabilities, utilities and roadways
Umm, there's already a spaceport under construction and really close to Texas.
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it's "really" close to the western tip of texas.....which puts it really far away from 99% of texas.
it's also in an absolutely stupid location. it's as if no one did a feasibility study or anything. there is no nearby population center. there is no nearby logistical transportation lines (major freeway, freight railline, major airport, etc). its int he middle of freaking no where. who's going to use it? super rish, super bored people....and thats it.
in order for a space port, spance-trans company to work rea
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Actually, those were listed as the criteria for locating the spaceport there. It's far enough from population, and that's good when things go south.
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and thats the thing. i thnk those criteria are in error. a spaceport shouldnt be a facility for experiment, where those things are a thing to be worried about, anymore than airplanes are expected to crash at airports. and whats happened is its now too far away for anyone or anything to even try to use it, to even try to start a new industry.
Disneyland with tax money (Score:2)
A "_____"port is a transportation and commercial node - but there's no transport or commerce of note taking places at these "space"ports... just glorified amusement park rides. They're being built (with tax dollars) for no purpose other than allowing airport mangers and commissions and various state officials to brag about having a "space"port.
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Wow... Not only an apple to... God knows what, as "apples to oranges comparison" doesn't even begin to describe the blithering idiocy and ignorance of your reply.
In the first place, a highway is a route connecting two destinations (which these 'ports' do not). Further, the Interstate Highway system was (originally) built for military purposes - commercial use was a distant secondary consideration. (Though it later came to dominate as the highway system became a pork barrel.)
In the second p
Great (Score:2)
Can we load all of Texas onto a rocket and send it to mars? One way?
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you forgot: shooting their guns till Old Age