🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan7.195658.8028@cerberus.ulaval.ca> yergeau@phy.ulaval.ca (Francois Yergeau) writes:
>>Actually, it is not at all uncommon for airlines to lease planes complete
>>with crews, 
>
>NASA could consider leasing shuttle services if a provider were
>available;  but there's none, and with orbiters at $1.5 billion a pop,
>plus gigadollar infrastructure, none is likely to appear...

Several *have* appeared.  That much money is not all that hard to find;
Boeing spent more than that (its own money, not borrowed) on the 757/767
program, and it's small potatoes compared to the (private) investment
in big electric-power projects.  Privately-funded orbiters have been
proposed repeatedly.

So why hasn't it been done already?  Because NASA hates the idea and has
consistently done its best to obstruct, stall, and kill such proposals.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry