nonist annex comments

Moonlighting engineers with help from retirees and space enthusiasts plan alternate rocket and moon mission? No it is not the pitch for the newest Joss Whedon series.

Quote: By day, the engineers work on NASA’s new Ares moon rockets. By night, some go undercover to work on a competing design (called Jupiter). These dissenting scientists and their backers insist they have created an alternative rocket that would be safer, cheaper and easier to build than the two Ares spacecraft that will replace the space shuttle.

Jupiter developers say: It’s simpler, more powerful, and would save about 35 billion dollars over two years. Plus, rogue engineers bootstrapping to the moon? Hells yeah.

NASA says: It’s little more than a sketch on a napkin. It’s not feasible and it won’t work. Now got off the lawn you pesky kids!

I just love this story. Not only for the space-related super-dork intrigue of it all. That we are getting to the point where such things can even be considered is thrilling. Check out the napkin in question-Direct 2.0 for tons of info, images, animations, etc. Also, check out Stephen Metschan’s 2 part story from a couple months back.

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