🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov20.201023.22268@ulysses.att.com> smb@ulysses.att.com (Steven Bellovin) writes:
>The question is whether or not there's enough profit to recoup that kind
>of up-front development.  In the space market, I sincerely doubt it,
>unless the launch rate goes *way* up (see below)...

Anybody considering sinking a bunch of cash into developing a much cheaper
launcher is automatically assuming new markets, not existing ones.  The
existing markets aren't badly hampered by existing launch prices -- they
shop for lowest price, sure, but they don't object to paying the going
rate if it buys them things they care about, like reliability -- and are
not going to respond to lower prices with great increases in volume.

This is one of the bigger obstacles to novel launcher development:  it's
not enough to build the launcher, you also need to have the resources to
hang in there while patiently nurturing a new market to use the new
capabilities.  If there was an assured market that you could point to,
commercial launcher development would be underway all over the place.
It's not an accident that the more farsighted schemes for encouraging
commercial launchers focus on guaranteeing a market, not on providing
direct support.
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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