Re: da Vinci's WildFire to fly Oct 2nd

Adrian Tymes wrote:
> 
> --- Michael Wallis <[email protected]> wrote:
> > The decision is
> > his to make, no matter how crazy *I* thing the
> > decision is.
> 
> This is very true, but it results in a problem that
> irritates many people trying to secure funding for
> serious space development (as opposed to
> pie-in-the-sky and/or mega-contractor-trough efforts
> that few professionals honestly expect to suceed).
> Highly publicized failures from this sort of effort
> reinforce the public image that this sort of effort
> can not work, thus people are less willing to fund
> those who do this sort of effort in ways that can
> work.

Didn't airplane flight endure the same sort of scepticism
(fueled by the varying results of numerous more-or-less-well-
prepared efforts) in the early years?

-dave w