Chair Force Engineer lists the technologies that need to be developed for us to become spacefaring, but are being largely ignored by NASA. I don’t agree with his prescription for a scramjet first stage for cheap launch, though. That may be the answer, some day, but it’s not obvious that it will be, and it certainly isn’t necessary to get big improvements in the near term.

But instead of making progress in these crucial areas, NASA is spending billions to return to the sixties.