> Your entire point is based on bulletin board discussions and anecdotal evidence from being peripherally involved with rocketry in the 90s (which given context

> Your entire point is based on bulletin board discussions and anecdotal evidence from being peripherally involved with rocketry in the 90s (which given context, I'm taking to mean "I hung out in space forums and bulletin boards and talked with people who claimed to be rocket engineers.") Oh for fuck's sake. I don't like arguments from authority, but if you really want one: yes, I hung out on internet space forums in the 90s and am thus aware of their contents. But I also was a member of the Space Access Society and regular attendee of its conferences; an organiser for the National Space Society and regular attendee of its conferences; and an organiser and founding member of the Mars Society and regular attendee of its conferences. In this context, I was personally well-acquainted with folks like Gary Hudson, Robert Zubrin, and Buzz Aldrin, as well as innumerable lesser-known individuals from NASA, Boeing/Lockmart, and the various alt.space renegades. The stories I tell come directly from my contacts with them. Furthermore, the "evidence" I provided was citations of the NASP[1], the X-33[2], and the SLI[3]. The first two represented NASA's flagship attempts to develop new space-launch systems during 80s and 90s; they failed due to weight growth and integration problems stemming from over-optimisation of the (LH2) propulsion system at the expense of all the rest of the vehicle's systems. By the time of the SLI in 2000, RP1 was starting to find a (small) place at the table again, but the program still failed due to too narrow a focus on propulsion optimisations. I figured that anybody familiar with the space industry (as the person I was replying to seemed to be) should be familiar with these failures and their underlying causes; they are not exactly secrets. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_X-30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_X-30 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-33 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-33 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_Initiative