Re: Space Access Update #112 9/19/05

JRS: In article <Ip4ws9.46C@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, dated Sat, 29 Oct 2005
18:31:21, seen in news:sci.space.policy, Henry Spencer
<henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> posted :
>In article <ZTVKInClA6WDFwkx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
>Dr John Stockton <reply0510@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>Aircraft are not a suitable model. There has been no major techno-jump
>>in passenger aircraft construction since WWII. There have been steps,
>>large and small, but all fairly obvious and intended to serve an
>>existing market...
>
>Uh, no, not so. The creation of the 747, in particular, was a massive act
>of optimism -- there was *NO WAY* that the existing market could possibly
>justify such an enormous increase in capacity, given that Boeing needed to
>sell 400 of the things just to break even. That decision was made at a
>time when jet airliners still served the luxury market, as witness the
>term "jet set". The idea that the market for air travel would expand
>enormously in the space of only a decade -- in the process, wiping out the
>rail and ship passenger markets -- bordered on fantasy.

There was an existing market; it only needed expansion for the 747 to
break even. If only 40 had been sold, at a cost representing the usual
margin over the cost of construction, it seems likely that they would
have been operated at a profit. The 747 would not have been a technical
failure.

Moreover, the 747 was constructed in much the same manner as
predecessors such as the 707 : a fuselage, a wing on each side with a
couple of dangling jet engines, a cockpit at the front, a tail,
retracting wheels underneath. It used substantially the same support
infrastructure elements, in larger sizes.

It was at most a financial jump, with a number of technical steps.

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