Spaceplanes

This evening I listened to the latest Guardian Science podcast that contained an interview with Piers Bizony. He was promoting his book How to Build Your Own Spaceship. I haven't seen the book yet, but everything he said in the interview seemed very similar to the work and the opinions of David Ashford of Bristol Spaceplanes. David came to talk to a few of us at work a few years back and gave me a copy of his spaceplanes book. My naive question to him was "If this is such a good idea, why haven't NASA been working on it?". His answer seems to be the same as Piers Bizony. Back in the days of the USA/USSR space race, there was a lot of pressure to get something up in space quickly, so not much time and money was spent on development. The result was that large industries were then built on the old-fashioned rocket technology that came out of this race. The story from Ashford and Bizony regarding why there are no spaceplanes yet is partly the practicalities of an entrenched industry and partly suggestions of a conspiracy theory that I don't think helps their ideas gain credibility.

The claim of people in the spaceplane business (what there is of it) is that, if they had just a tiny fraction of one percent of NASA's budget, they could build a working spaceplane. I'd like to see them get a fair crack to try out their ideas. If there is going to be a spaceplane business in the future, Bristol seems like a good place to have it!

Edit: I found David Ashford's book at work. It's called 'Spaceflight Revolution' and it was published by Imperial College Press in 2003.