🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1993Jan7.080605.1770@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman) writes:

>Apollo came in on time, as crash military programs sometimes do, and
>near budget, a budget more than double that of Shuttle in constant
>dollars, but where is it now? 

You didn't say previous spacecraft were expensive to develop,
or that, once developed, they might be cancelled for political
reasons.  You said that had 200% overruns.

If you can't answer the question, change the subject. :-)


>It's you who expouses your whole cloth failure-seeking strawman. I 
>expouse careful engineering planning for the inevitable developmental
>setbacks in any new venture. 

There's a difference between careful engineering planning -- which
is just what was done in Project Apollo and is being done with 
Delta Clipper and which you *hate* -- and spending three times
as much as the cost of the project on feasiblity studies, management
reviews, cost reviews, and redundant paperwork.  That's what you
espouse.  (Even the Shuttle program did not have enough unnecessary
overhead to please you.)


>That's not failure seeking, that's failure avoiding by providing 
>alternatives to risky sections of a program. 

Yet Project Apollo, which you rail against, was a success.  And
the Shuttle program, which you consider much better (though not
perfect) was a failure.

I guess when it comes to pleasing you, nothing succeeds like failure.


>There's a vast difference between the incremental improvements from
>one aircraft to the next in the series and in a clean sheet of paper
>design by a team who has never done any similar work. Name 5 vertical
>takeoff and landing reusable spacecraft designed by the MacDD team.

Name five jet airliners designed by Boeing before the model 707.
Name five unducted fanjets flying today.

Real engineers develop "clean sheet designs" all the time.  The
principles of engineering do not stop working just because a new
design operates in 0 psi instead of 5 psi.
 
I don't want to belabor the obvious, but since you seem to be
oblivous to suc things....

There have been hundreds of vertical takeoff and landing
vehicles built over the last 50 years.  Most of them are
called helicopters and, to best of my knowledge, every one
of them was reuseable.  A non-reuseable helicopter would
have been too expensive to develop, let alone operate.

Yet you don't claim that a helicopter is nearly impossible
to build.  It's the word "spacecraft" that makes you bug
your eyes and wet your pants.
 

>Knowledge of NACA airfoils and high
>bypass turbofans just doesn't transfer to vertical takeoff and landing
>rockets no matter how much you wave your hands about it.

Gosh.  It guess it's a good thing that spaceships don't need
airfoils or high-bypass turbofans.