🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C0M93s.9u7@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>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convincing would-be launcher developers that it won't get repealed during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.

	I'm confused.  Is the US the only country that has the 'environment' to
set up a launch site?  My understanding about why it is all done from Florida
is that it has to do with weather and easy of escaping Earth's atmosphere (lower
gravity?)

	Now, I know that the USSR(don't know which part has it now) has a space
 program, and that there are a few other countrys that also have their own
space programs.

	If the private sector was willing to/were to be convinced to fund a private
space program...why is the US the only place to do it?  Where their rules/laws/whims
are followed?

Marc
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