🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec25.014627.4982@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes:

>In military procurement, the development costs are charged against
>the prototypes, X, Y, etc, and the operational vehicles of the procurement 
>are charged at "flyaway" cost. 

Which I suspect is done largely to hide the true cost. I point out that if
the contractors in question ran their accounts this way they would all be
in jail and out of buisness.

>Following this model, Enterprise ate the 
>development costs, and it's retired. Current Orbiters are only liable for 
>their $1.5 billion flyaway cost and their operational costs. 

But why should we follow that model? Hiding costs like you advocate only
encourages waste and inefficiency. How can we possibly make access to space
cheap if we make it impossible to identify those costs and reduce them?

That approach simply has not and will not get us anywhere.

    Allen

-- 
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer | "A great man is one who does nothing but leaves        |
|  aws@iti.org     |  nothing undone"                                       |
+----------------------118 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+