🚀 go-pugleaf

This note concerns Henry Spencer's posting in Vol. 7, No. 45  in Space

Digest.  I would like to begin by offering my thanks to Henry for his

distillations from Aviation Week.  I'm located in Goettingen, West

Germany (AVA-DFVLR).  The DFVLR library doesn't receive Aviation Week

until fairly late, so Henry's efforts are greatly appreciated.  Also it

seems that Henry does a much better job of reading Aviation Week than I

do, since he's always finding tidbits that I missed.  Henry's last

postings raised two questions in my mind.  Why is it, that to

remanufacture the old F-1 engines is more expensive than using SSMEs?

It seems ludicrous to be throwing a reuseable SSME into the sea when a

cheaper and higher performance F-1 (which is designed to be

use-once-throw-away) is the obvious choice.  Admittedly there is an

initial tool up expense.  However it is hard to believe that this

expense couldn't be quickly offset by the lower launch cost for an F-1

based Jarvis.  I've always thought that the F-1 engine was one of the

more important technologies to come out of the Apollo program, and

its premature obsolesence was a serious error.  On another

subject the TAU (Thousand Astronautical Unit) spacecraft smacks of being

a boondoggle.  Who in his right mind would want to fund a multimillion

dollar spacecraft that literally goes nowhere?  If you want to argue

that it is a test bed for a high preformance nuclear-ion propulsion

system, then my snappy comeback is the money could be better spent

on a comet rendevous using the same technology.  An even better mission

would be a Pluto orbiter.  I've always thought that Pluto might well be

an example of a "rogue planet" which was created outside of the solar

system.  The theory is that Pluto approached the solar system on a

hyperbolic trajectory, (which by definition means it would have escape

velocity), but was captured because it had a near miss with the moon

Triton orbiting Neptune.  Both Triton and Pluto have very irregular

orbits, and Pluto does intersect with Neptune's orbit. Therefore this

theory isn't as nutty as it first sounds.  When Voyager flies by Triton,

we'll have more evidence to fuel or quench speculation.  On any event

this TAU mission strikes me as a misuse of limited planetary exploration

funds.

                       Gary Allen