🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5714@cbnewsh.ATT.COM> lmg@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (lawrence.m.geary,ho,) writes:
>#...the Shuttle/IUS combination is the heaviest
>#booster available (outside the Soviet Union).  Titan/Centaur is in second
>#place by a considerable margin.
>...
>
>Didn't we use Titan/Centaur to launch the Voyagers?

That's right.  The Voyagers went up before the shuttle was operational
and after all the bigger stuff was abandoned.

>#The only available-now launcher that could do a better job on Cassini
>#would be Energia.
>
>Available now is not the issue. Cassini is launching toward the end of
>the century...

But it must be planned now, on the basis of launch vehicles which are
known to be available.  That limits the list to Titan/Centaur and
Shuttle/IUS.  If NASA would *commit* to, say, a Shuttle-C/Centaur
combination, that would be a different story... assuming funds for
it continued to be available, that is.  The space-station planners
don't feel they can count on the improved version of the shuttle SRBs,
much less Shuttle-C.

>We succeeded in going from initial concept to a moon landing
>in less time than that. Now you are confirming my suspicions that we are
>dead in the water as far as progress on ELV's goes. No program. No plan.

Quite so, I'm afraid.  The NASA that ran Project Apollo is not the one
running today's programs, and the Congress that supported it has changed
a little too.  The only new large expendables being pursued at all are
Shuttle-C and ALS.  Both suffer from the same problem:  where are the
customers?  I suspect Shuttle-C, being a relatively tame shuttle
derivative, can get funded with the space station and a few other
things as justification.  ALS hasn't a prayer of ever flying unless
the political situation vis-a-vis SDI changes radically.
-- 
A bit of tolerance is worth a  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
megabyte of flaming.           | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu