Re: Death Sentence for the Hubble?

From: Fred J. McCall (fmccall_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 02/27/05 

Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 15:33:48 GMT

simberg.interglobal@org.trash (Rand Simberg) wrote:

:On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 04:57:32 GMT, in a place far, far away, Fred J.
:McCall <fmccall@earthlink.net> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
:such a way as to indicate that:
:
:>:>Of course there is, but we're talking about developing systems that it
:>:>is claimed are easy to do and will have a huge market (which is a big
:>:>piece of the rest of the business plan).
:>:
:>:But up until now, the "huge market" part generated a great deal of
:>:skepticism. That's what's kept it from happening, not the
:>:technological side.
:>
:>That doesn't seem to track, either. One need merely look at the
:>number of current launches. Being able to come up with a reliable and
:>inexpensive launcher would quite obviously allow you to capture a lot
:>of those existing launches, even if lower launch costs didn't enlarge
:>the market.
:
:That doesn't constitute enough business to amortize the development
:costs. You need a much bigger market than that. The claim is that
:it's easy to do, not that it's inexpensive to do. It still takes a
:lot of up-front investment.

If it takes that much up front investment in "development costs", then
it is *NOT* "easy". There is a difference between "can be done" and
"can be easily done". 

-- 
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
                           -- Charles Pinckney

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