This was the most depressing quote for me:
>It is unlikely that launching a space vehicle will ever be as routine an undertaking as commercial air travel—certainly not in the lifetime of anybody who reads this.
>It is unlikely that launching a space vehicle will ever be as routine an undertaking as commercial air travel—certainly not in the lifetime of anybody who reads this.
The numbers say otherwise:
There's no legend on that table; it took me a while to figure out that it's Launches and Failures.
The economies just don't scale. It costs a few thousand dollars to fly a transcontinental flight on a 777, and passengers don't have to be trained in all types of contingency situations like astronauts do. The cost for a single Shuttle launch used to be an eight-figure sum.
Someday getting to space will be as simple as a transcontinental flight. Unfortunately, rockets aren't the way we're going to get there.