🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Feb3.135440.21949@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de> dfi@specklec.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Daniel Fischer) writes:
>...The Director General of the German space
>agency DARA, Mr.Wild, has declared publicly last Friday (in a speech before
>Bonn University physicists) that he and many others at DARA will work towards
>a German position that will call for the end of the project, the cost of which
>is approaching DM 20 000 000 000,-  and the use of which, after recent
>descoping, is near zero.

Also note that Ariane 5 underwent costly design changes to fit Hermes.
Essentially, Ariane 5 is optimized to be a manned launcher, and only 
secondarily to launch commercial payloads.  I have predicted before, and 
will say again, that Ariane 5/Hermes is Europe's Shuttle, and it could
very well do to European commercial and defense programs what the Shuttle
did to ours (ie, massive delays in projects that signed on, and a severe 
drain on government space funding).  Ariane up to v4 was a good example 
of planning focused on useful space projects; Ariane 5/Hermes is an example 
of NASA-style planning, divorced from economic reality.

The "space taxi" sounds like a meaningless sop if I ever heard one.  :-)


-- 
szabo@techbook.COM  ...!{tektronix!nosun,uunet}techbook!szabo
Public Access UNIX at (503) 644-8135 (1200/2400) Voice: +1 503 646-8257
Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks