🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8583@utzoo.UUCP>, henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
> > I don't know where you're getting your information...
> 
> Aviation Week, Flight International, Spaceflight, JBIS, Space World,


You mean Avaition Leak.  

> 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

The shuttle was grounded for a good reason,  and when it flies again I'd
send my own grandmother up on one,  with me sitting right next to her.

> 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


What does that prove?  That the Soviets are more advanced than we are?
Hardly. 
 
> 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,
> 

So?  When will it fly.  Others beleive the Russian Shuttle is a mockup,  a
non-working hoax.  I think you're years away from a launch.  Years.

> 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

No kidding.  And I beleive there's good reasons for it.  But when it flies
again,  we'll see regular shuttle launches and a VERY reliable system.

> > 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.  

You might as well hope for the Second Coming,  becuase it'll happen before
the Soviet Shuttle flies.

> > > 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)...
> 





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