🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec31.001942.11805@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes:
>In article <1hfqr6INN387@mirror.digex.com> prb@access.digex.com (Pat) writes:
>>i dont believe the russians have ever been charged with using slave
>>labor.  Now the russians had a strange command economy,  but things still
>>cost, but there were major problems in distribution.  the russian/SU
>>economy was sorta like massachusetts meets new york via sweden.
>>
>
>I agree with all of this. My point was that all those social services,
>which in our system are paid out of worker salaries, were paid out of
>a different account that wasn't charged against their space program. 
>So using their numbers is an invalid comparison with numbers from a
>differently organized economy because many of their costs are "hidden"
>in other government accounts. That looks like it's changing, and we
>may soon discover that Russian costs *aren't* really much lower than 
>ours for similar launchers.
>



Complaining about socialized economies having strange costing rules
is significantly differennt then stating that the russians
use slave labor.    Certainly comparing DoD costs to Commercial sector
costs to French Costs to Soviet Costs  to Chinese costs  is a difficult
problem.  

I am certain that after the re-organization is done, we will discover russian
costs are closer to ours,   but i believe they will be able to provide
launch services cheaper then ours, due to their economies of scale.  

Hopefully DC-1 will still remain competitive against their sausage
factory lines.

pat