...on a computer what it took fifty years of uninterrupted Democratic rule to do in real life!

They've already licensed the damn thing for domestic production from the beginning and had a good decade where they could have set up their own factory and had the Russians come in and willingly ensure they are being produced correctly and fix any detail not conveyed properly on the plans. In fact, I believe that the RD-180 is more of a work-for-hire specifically commissioned for Lockheed's requirements.

Now everything is sour and steps to remedy it look political, rather than just a way of giving jobs for American blue collar labour, which is how it would have appeared before.

The RD-180 is a good engine that provides staged combustion performance and efficiency at similar cost to American gas generator cycle engines. The only problems with it is that it was really hard to design, which is irrelevant when you have the plans anyway. It would be a shame for NIH syndrome to screw up America's capability to launch satellites.

Notability is important for preventing a potentially slippery slope towards Wikipedia being expected to have an article on every shop, every street, every apartment complex, every popular teacher, and every creative work ever appreciated by more than 10 people.

However, there is something frankly awful about the way it is handled.

Deleting an article should be a grim and thankless task, carried out in the stoical way that a county bailiff would hang or brand a petty thief. Instead, it seems to be a matter of great pride and satisfaction to those who elect themselves to carry it out. These folks really seem to enjoy making up pedantic excuses to remove things, even when faced with strong opposition and enough evidence to at least raise reasonable doubt. When I have checked many of these editor's commit logs, I frequently find that they do little else but marking other articles for deletion, adding "citation needed" after junior highschool level facts and giving barnstars to other like minded nimrods.

If one has contributed in good faith to an article that has been marked for deletion or even appreciated reading one of these articles, it is hard to maintain one's passion for the project. Back when I was a regular contributor, I was creating articles for large international airlines and the like. Then when those were all finished, I made ones for well known video games, books, composers, etc. After those were done, there seemed like nothing remaining but the obscure. But at this time, it was so hard to be excited when one needs to justify each time why Wikipedia would not be better off if what you just wrote was erased, So for the last 7 years, I've pretty much just changed a comma or semicolon here and there.

Who determines what positions are and aren't OK to take?

There has never been an Australian citizen in space.

Of the two Australian born persons who have been in space. One of them took American citizenship in order to join NASA's astronaut program, the other already was an American Naval Officer when he joined NASA.

The only British Citizen that has been to space went up with the Soviet space program.

To my knowledge, the NASA human spaceflight program was for Americans only since its inception.

If I can recall back to my university days, approximately:

• 100% - A - B
• Where:
• A = percentage of East Asian males
• B = percentage of Indian males

The other options to the Falcon 9 are the Atlas 5 and Delta IV, they are now sold as complete vehicles by United Launch Alliance (a consortium of the two) and were before 2006 sold as complete vehicles by Lockheed and Boeing respectively. Or one could use an Ariane 5 (Airbus) or Proton (Khrunichev), also complete vehicles.

NASA's policy of farming out to different contractors was only ever done for their megaprojects like Saturn rockets and the Space Shuttle and this was only because they were also designed to drive research and provide economic stimulation (or pork as one may cynically call it) rather than be practical solutions to mundane problems like Falcon 9 (as well as those other Rockets I mentioned) is designed to be.

If NASA, for the first time in its history chooses the Falcon as their man rated rocket of choice, this is because they have absolutely no other candidates. If Boeing wants to, they can choose a supplier of a capsule (RSC Enegia, SpaceX and others) and create a man rated Delta rocket to provide another option to NASA. At any rate NASA and Congress would do better at picking ready made vehicles to buy than they did in organising the Orion project.

Really good post.

Until you got to the Beeching Axe and you started sounding like a nostalgic train anorak.

Then you got to Boeing and SpaceX of all topics and it just went worse from there on.

The Beeching Axe almost got British Rail back to profitability. SpaceX is just a competitor for Boeing Defense, Space & Security, which Boeing damn well needs, after acquiring all of its previous competitors like Rocketdyne, McDonnell Douglas and Hughes.

As a programmer, project manager and substantial shareholder in my own company, I'm always grateful when people point out things I do that could be done better.

If I was just the former and not the latter two, I think the relative importance of my ego and the quality of the product would be shifted somewhat.

Most, Open Source programmers tend to value recognition pretty highly relative to absolute merit of the product. To your average guy, if you say "your project sucks, we'll pay you to fix it" means that you will get the credit when it is fixed. If you say "your project is good but it could be better" means you will give them the credit either way.