🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1j74t4INNa2k@mojo.eng.umd.edu> sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu writes:
>In article <1993Jan15.192031.6998@iti.org>, aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>>In article <1j6r6aINN6fs@mojo.eng.umd.edu> sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu writes:
>>>And Alan thinks you'll see a Soyuz sitting on top of a U.S. booster launched
>>>from a U.S. facility....
>>Oh, that's a given. The booster may be the Shuttle but we will see Soyuz
>>being launched for (at the very least) ACRV on US launchers.
>And the booster to lift ACRV may not be shuttle, for that matter. Lockheed has
>made a proposal to use Proton <sp?> to deliver them to Freedom.

'scuse me if this has been covered, but Buzz Aldrin apparently has been
advocating using the Energia boosters (larger and cheaper than enything we
have, yes?) to boost US payloads, and possibly putting Freedom into Mir's
orbit to take advantage of both Mir and the leftover Russian lifting
capability (OMNI Jan '93).  I'm sure western aerospace companies are
clutching at their chests over that idea, as if they didn't have enough
problems in the slash-and-burn budget environment, but then again, who
cares?  I mean, life's rough, and a track record of public funding isn't a
guarantee of future funding.  

I'm sure there are lots of great arguments why it isn't that simple, but
still, if it comes to having or not having a platform (which is really
where we are now) we need to have the damn thing.  Combining the two
services seems like a brilliant idea to me, with the shuttle and our
high-tech experience and know-how and the Russian workhorse lifters, Mir
(for what it's worth) and their experience with 'just do it' engineering,
we could be in business within my lifetime.  Current scheduling doesn't
seem to have a chance in hell of actually _getting_ the thing up there any
time soon.

Flame the hell out of me if I'm just being niave.

-chris blask