A Brief History of Rockets, and Why They’re Not Getting Any More Advanced

Over at Slate , Neal Stephenson charts a legal brief , fascinating story of the roquette , set forth with Hitler ’s V-2 during the second World War and ending with today ’s sophisticated skyrocket , capable of launching complex communication theory satellite that can be up to $ 100,000 a hammer . But here , Stephenson explains , we find ourselves locked in :

To employ a commonly used metaphor , our current technique in rocket - building is the issue of a pitcher’s mound - climbing approach ; we started at one seat on the technical landscape painting - which must be deal a random pick , give that it was take for in question reasons by a madman - and climbed the hill from there , look for modest steps that could be take on to increase the size and efficiency of the equipment . Sixty years and a duo of trillion dollars later , we have reached a place that is infinitesimally skinny to the top of that James Jerome Hill . rocket are as close to perfect as they ’re ever going to get . For a few more billion dollars we might be able to achieve a microscopic improvement in efficiency or reliableness , but to make any game - change improvements is not only expensive ; it ’s a forcible impossibility .

There is no shortage of proposals for radically innovative space launch schemes that , if they work , would get us across the valley to other hilltops considerably in high spirits than the one we are stand on now - high enough to get the toll and hazard of space launch down to the point where basically Modern thing could begin happening in outer space . But we are not making any serious exploit as a fellowship to traverse those valleys . It is not open why .

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