🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov18.134348.16504@iti.org> aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>The US shouldn't be putting it's money into the design of ANY expendable
>launcher. We have done that for too long and it's hasn't reduced launch
>costs by a dime.

Actually, this isn't a very sound argument.  The US has been putting big
bucks into small improvements to the performance and reliability of 50s-
vintage expendable launchers.  It *hasn't* made any serious effort to
build a cheaper one (which cannot be done without changing the way the
launchers are built and operated -- it's not the fuels and metals that
cost all that money, but the way they're used).  All that money has been
going into squeezing one more ounce out of existing designs, and any sane
engineer will predict a lousy cost/benefit ratio for that approach.

No conclusion can be drawn about the possibility of cheaper expendables;
it has not been tried.  Even the projects that have officially included
"lower costs" in their objectives have always had higher-priority objectives
(typically, maximum payload and maximum reliability) that pushed them
toward higher, not lower, costs.

Certainly, even after you get past complications like different accounting
systems, there is no possible doubt that launchers like Soyuz and Long
March really are substantially cheaper to run than Atlas or Delta.  It
*can* be done.
-- 
MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s.      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
              -Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry