🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C0K4xF.Fvo.1@cs.cmu.edu> dep+@CS.CMU.EDU (David Pugh) writes:
>The federal government paid the early airlines to carry mail. In some (most?)
>cases, these mail subsidies were the only thing that made the airlines profitable.
>So ... it seems reasonable to wonder if a similar program could be done for the
>private launcher market. What I'm proposing is that the government agree to pay
>$1000/lbs to deliver 1 million pounds to LEO each year from 1995 to 2015. At
>$1 billion/year, this would be a fairly small program (by government standards).

Congratulations, you've reinvented (more or less) the Commercial Space
Incentive Act, which was proposed a few years ago.  Congress didn't like it
and it didn't get anywhere.

Even if you could get it passed, there is the non-trivial problem of
convincing would-be launcher developers that it won't get repealed during
their development period.  It *is* a relatively small expense, and it
almost certainly *would* be extremely effective, but it's not the way
Congress likes to do things.

>... (I realize, of course,
>that NASA would ever let it pass no matter what we did to it)?

It's not NASA's decision.  Congress has passed bills that NASA didn't like.
Forget NASA; the hard part is selling it to Congress.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry