🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov20.155202.16554@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> rbw3q@rayleigh.mech.Virginia.EDU (Brad Whitehurst) writes:
>	If you are using well tested current technology, why should
>the gov't. pay for any of the craft?

The components are mostly well tested.  The combination is not.

>But if your claim to fame is that you can do all the transportation
>using current technology and are not pushing the envelope, then
>convince private concerns that they'll turn a profit, and invest in it
>themselves...

Indeed so.  But the first step to showing profit potential is establishing
that the concept works in practice, and this involves enough up-front
financial risk that the private concerns have not been willing to fund it.
(People have tried.)  Nobody is confident enough in the concept that they
are willing to bet their future plans on it, which means no firm orders
for SSTO launchers... and not even Boeing will build an airliner without
getting at least a few firm orders signed first.
-- 
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