A little research shows the Space Shuttle not only had completely reusable first stage boosters but also returned it’s upper stage engines- engines far more powerful and efficient than the hobby rocket. Claiming such a breakthrough is just as bizarre as calling a suborbital tourist conveyance a “space ship.” In fact, even calling the destination of this mediocre lift vehicle a “space station” is not really valid in my view because Low Earth Orbit is not really space- not since humankind moved on to higher domains. Spacecraft and space platforms should be defined as differing from Spaceships and Space Stations in the same way fiberglass canoes and tents differ from ocean going ships and hi-rise buildings.

LEO has about as much in common with space as a catfish pond does with the North Atlantic. The idea of shuttling small loads into LEO and assembling larger items to travel onward and upward was very popular for several decades but the reality was found to be not so wonderful. The closest useful site for human beings to go in space is Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) and is an order of magnitude higher above the surface of our planet. GEO has no protective layer like LEO to keep solar events from dosing astronauts with radiation. So the only human constructs to be found hovering 22,236 miles above us are communications relay stations. Satellites. They don’t last forever and cannot be repaired so this ring around the Earth is slowly turning into a junkyard of space debris.

An event as significant as the Wright brothers first flight would actually be to go somewhere beyond LEO in a true Spaceship or the positioning of a true Space Station somewhere above LEO. Without unobtanium or wishalloy to overthrow the laws of physics this means those ships and stations, for several reasons, are going to come from the Moon.

As far as wiki goes, I believe anyone can edit their articles. You could change it to read that Bugs Bunny originated the concept. Would not prove that he did.

People think it cannot happen but they are so wrong. I have personally seen what a category V super hurricane can do up close (Hugo 1989). Civilization is far more fragile than we think. Humankind seems to think they are in complete control of their destiny. It’s not true. According to the genetic record our species almost went extinct once already 72,000 years ago; in the big scheme of things we are here by a flip of the coin that was tossed quite recently. The most recent Godzilla film was criticized for inferring that no matter what happens “nature” will take care of us and everything will turn out alright. I guess momma nature did not like the dinosaurs because there are no Godzilla’s protecting us except in the film industry.

We need to get some survival colonies established off-world and the Moon is the first place to go.

I notice there is now an entry on the wiki page concerning a proposed Lagrange “Skylab II” using SLS components. There is no mention of what happens when the first X-class flare hits it. I can see such a station in lunar orbit where it has better access to lunar water radiation shielding- brought up by robots- but why a Langrange location? Because the Moon is verboten?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_workshop

http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/craft/outpost.htm

If you look into the details of Project Orion, you will also find that Ehricke had inputs.

“By the time the government killed the project in 1842, they had given Babbage over £17,000, without receiving a working engine. What Babbage did not, or was unwilling to, recognize was that the government was interested in economically produced tables, not the engine itself.[5]”

Filthy lucre. Where would we be now if science had Babbage machines from the mid-19th century on?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine

Since Skylab did fly and……. “As far back as the Peenemunde days, von Braun and his colleagues had speculated on converting an empty stage into a shelter for a small crew. In 1959 the idea was put forth in the report of a study called Project Horizon,-”

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4208/ch2.htm

I assume by “Mr. Brown” you mean Werner Von Braun. I am going to leave the issue of assessing blame for Nazi atrocities to others, but Von Braun did not originate the concept of using expended fuel tanks as habitable volume. That honor goes to another Peenemunde alumnus Krafft Ehricke (yes I know I have mentioned him quite a bit, but he generated a number of concepts – many of them useful – for which he doesn’t get credit).

Check out the link below:

http://www.krafftaehricke.com/ehricke_outpost_1.php