🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1993Jan7.060559.805@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman) writes:

>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. 

With your talent for rewriting history, it's too bad the Soviet Union
is no longer in business. :-)

In fact, there were plenty of missions that could have justified
its expense: the follow-on Apollo missions, additional Skylabs,
Space Base, nuclear-powered space tugs, and the manned Mars mission,
to name a few.  The Saturn was cancelled because Congress didn't
want to do those missions and NASA didn't want anything to compete
with Shuttle.


>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. 

Instead, we should make the new mistake of funding a system
whose managers seek to crush any potential competition?

>Thus I champion continuing to fly Shuttle until there are proven 
>systems on line to replace it. 

And, like the Shuttle managers, bad-mouth any potential systems
that *might* replace it.  (Or seek keep them limited to research
programs only.)

>Neither the paper DC-1 nor the proposed Soyuz on Titan have that 
>track record yet. 

Why did you avoid mentioning Soyuz on Soviet launchers?

>Meanwhile Shuttle continues to maintain a presence in space for 
>the USA that does worthwhile missions.

At the cost of how many worthwhile missions we can't do with
the Shuttle but could with a true space-transportation system?
Since you talk about the opportunity costs that would be incurred 
by cancelling the Shuttle, why do you fail to consider the 
opportunity costs involved in continuing it? 


>Unlike Allen, I am completely convinced that killing Shuttle now will
>not cause any money to be reprogrammed to his pet schemes. 

So am I.  I am also completely convinced it would wipe out
a major political base opposed to alternative launchers.