🚀 go-pugleaf

> I don't know where you're getting your information...

Aviation Week, Flight International, Spaceflight, JBIS, Space World,
Astronomy, World Spaceflight News, Planetary Encounter, ...

> but the Soviets have NOTHING that can compare to the shuttle...

Quite true:  they have *no* launch systems that are grounded for 2+1/2
years after a single failure.  After the last Proton failure, the delay
before the next Proton launch was (as I recall) a whole 11 days.  The
Soviet hardware indeed cannot compare to the shuttle; when it comes to
launching payloads into space, their crude, primitive boosters are
light-years ahead of the shuttle.

> There is nothing on the pad
> anywhere in the Soviet Union that even remotely resembles the shuttle...

Oh really?  According to G. Harry Stine, one of the West's better experts
on the Soviet program, there is an Energia with a shuttle on its back on
the pad at Baikonur as we speak.  (Doesn't mean a launch will happen soon,
though:  the first Energia spent a full year on the pad before launch.)

> And
> there's no way you can get me to beleive that ANY Russian hardware performs 
> better than the shuttle.

Net shuttle performance for the last year and a half:  zero.  Or negative
if you count all the money going into it.  There have been 15 or so Proton
launches in that time, and several Soyuzes, not to mention a host of lesser
launches.  Remember when NASA hoped for weekly shuttle launches?  The Soviets
launch one of those crude, dumb boosters of theirs about every four days.
Not four months, not four weeks, FOUR DAYS.  This is called "performance".

> The Soviets do not have the capability of transporting payloads into space
> and returing with other payloads.

They don't have the capability -- until the Energia-shuttle goes up -- of
*returning* major payloads to Earth.  But even the US shuttle didn't do a
whole lot of that.  When it comes to getting things *into* space, there is
no comparison.

> They do not have the capability of
> sending teams of scientists and technicians into space all at once like we
> can with the shuttle.  

Quite true, they have to send them up a few at a time in Soyuzes, and then
rendezvous at Mir to put the whole team together.  Oddly enough, the US
cannot do that.

> > However, our most fundamental problem -- the damn boosters cost too much
> > and fly too seldom -- will NOT be solved this way...
> 
> Cost too much?  Maybe,  but if flown like they were in '85 and '86 the cost
> comes way down.   The cost of flying the shuttle will remian high until we
> get them going regularly again (soon,  I hope)...

Surely you jest.  Current prices for loads into orbit are about $5000/lb on
US boosters, much the same as they were in 1985.  This will *not* come down
significantly with any launch schedule that is even remotely feasible any
time soon.  The Soviets, by the way, quote commercial rates of about 1/5
of that.

(Incidentally, we do *not* want to fly them the way they were flown in
1986 -- that was a spectacular year, but also tragic and very costly.)

> Besides,  high technology
> is expensive,  and the shuttle is probably the most advanced space vehicle
> in the world today.  IT'S WORTH IT.

Really?  Please ask NASA what the price tag to be a passenger on a shuttle
launch is.  If you get any answer at all, you'll find that you'd probably
have to invest tens of millions into a major payload to have any chance of
getting on.  The Soviets will sell you a commercial Soyuz launch for eight
million dollars (payable in Swiss francs or other hard currency).  Oddly
enough, all this advanced high tech does not seem to be necessary to put
people and equipment into space.  Is it REALLY worth it?
-- 
"There's a lot more to do in space   |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
than sending people to Mars." --Bova | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry