What happened to Andrew Beal?

[space_tycoon]

Interesting that the Wikipedia entry on Beal mentions almost nothing of his rocketry efforts:<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Beal <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[comga]

Sorry, vulture2, but I disagree with almost all of your assertions.<br /><br />Beal had his environmental impact statement written. The British just showed no interest in reviewing or approving it. <br /><br />He didn't come to the conclusion that the government was the only customer. He said that they were unbeatable competition. It was not the EELV that he sited but SLI, the Space Launch Initiative where NASA was going to spend $7B to build an EELV class rocket of their own.<br /><br />His design was hardly innovative. It was an updated V-2 with a composite structure. It was, however, interesting, as you said. That we can agree on.<br /><br />Additionally, as a previous post stated, he found out how really hard it would have been to build such an enormous rocket engine, particularly a blow-down engine without turbomachinery. There may have been a lack of realism on the part of the experts he hired. It may also have been his error, which is being repeated to a degree by Elon Musk, of jumping to a large rocket before perfecting the small rocket.