Comment Re:NASA requires 2 good launches before US astrona (Score 1) 83
The Russians had a Proton M/Briz M fail less than a week before the Soyuz/Progress (M-12M) failure. Both failures, IIRC, were for similar reasons.
I'm not a physicist, so I don't really know a huge amount about this. Is there actually a viable design for a spaceplane with a large cargo capacity in the works anywhere?
Yes, there is a "viable" design for a spaceplane with large cargo capacity in the works. Its still a significant amount of development away from production, but its past a concept. Its called the Skylon
Real Programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who wear white socks.