🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1989Jul21.193401.19303@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes, referring to small, high-performance jet aircraft:

>If a private market in such things were allowed, we wouldn't have to buy
>things designed by the government.

Then buy a BD-5J.  There isn't one cent of government money in BD-5Js.

Since a private market for high-performance, jet "fighter" aircraft
does exist, why is this market _so_ small?  Why is there essentially
only one entry in the market?  Maybe the market has decided that this
isn't an appropriate place to allocate resources?

I am, of course, assuming that the market is rational.  Since this is
apparently also your assumption, I don't think we're very far off.

I think that, to some extent, the same argument applies to the market
and private space efforts.

I'd like to point out that I'm part of the aeronautical side of NASA 
and not connected to the space portion except as a tax payer and
interested bystander.  But we have a joke that the first A in NASA is
6 point and the S is 36 point.


--

M F Shafer                          shafer@elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center           arpa!elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer
Dryden Flight Research Facility
                Of course I don't speak for NASA