🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ewright.726276409@convex.convex.com> ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright) writes:
>In <1993Jan5.212935.21012@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman) writes:
>
>>Having design engineers apprentice on
>>the shop floor for a few years *before* they get to design a product
>>would do a world of good for our manufacturing sector. It certainly
>>has for the Japanese and old school Germans.
>
>You mean like that horrid know-nothing, Wernher von Braun? ;-)

I have absolutely no idea where you get such absurd ideas. Von Braun
is the perfect example of a wartime technologist. He took enormous
risks and spent cubic money to bring a critical system in on schedule.
That's admirable in wartime, but not in the commercial arena. You'll
notice that after Saturn achieved it's Cold War objective of oneupmanship
against the USSR, it was promptly dropped because no other missions 
could justify it's expense and there was never a hope of recouping it's
development costs. 

Shuttle was the "low cost" system that was touted to replace expensive
expendibles like Saturn. When Shuttle proved not to be so low cost after 
all, it was too late to go back to the already dead Saturn, and Congress 
refused to fund development of a launcher to replace Shuttle. So now we 
have a capable, but expensive, launcher in operation. We should never again 
make the mistake of killing our only operational system in favor of a paper
spacecraft that hasn't established a solid track record of meeting it's
performance and cost goals. Thus I champion continuing to fly Shuttle
until there are proven systems on line to replace it. Neither the paper
DC-1 nor the proposed Soyuz on Titan have that track record yet. They
may never have that track record and some completely different system
may be needed to replace the capabilities of Shuttle. Meanwhile Shuttle
continues to maintain a presence in space for the USA that does worthwhile
missions.

Unlike Allen, I am completely convinced that killing Shuttle now will
not cause any money to be reprogrammed to his pet schemes. The only
results of killing Shuttle would be 7,000 Florida aerospace workers on
the unemployment line, workers in Houston, California, Nevada, Mississippi,
Alabama, and other places on the unemployment line, all hope of recouping 
Shuttle development and infrastructure costs gone forever, a long hiatus in 
US manned spaceflight if not it's permanent termination, and more money for 
the VA and Clinton's national health care program. I find that scenario
personally unacceptable.

Gary
-- 
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
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