Re: Establish demand

On 27 Feb, 05:34, "Totorkon" <aertr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The procurement system of the pentagon is essentially socialist and
runs close to $300G a year. For many systems there is only one
reasonable vendor, like Boing for air tankers.

Interesting point. Boeing claims that Airbus is subsidized. True there
are "headline" subsidies for Airbus, yet the Pentagon "subsidies" for
Boeing are ignored.

The first aim of NASA should be to bring launch costs down. Henry
suggests that a RLV could do this, at least if it is launched
frequently enough. To justify this, suitable payloads must be part of
the plan.
A mass range of 20 tons to orbit is large enough that per launch costs
under $2000/Kg might be achievable, yet small enough to require the
frequent flights that can amortise the initial costs, for an overall
cost of $4000/Kg. It could provide the technology and experience to
pave the way for further drops in price.
The present VSE is to use SRBs and disposable RS68 engines to put a
manned base on the moon. For less cost we could have missions that
really bring home the data for deep space astronomy and the solar
system, and a launch system that dosn't ditch itself in the Atlantic
after each countdown.- Hide quoted text -

You may be right. Your shirt please. I feel that if we got removed
from bureaucracy and subsidy we might be in a better position. I tend
to feel that Science should have a budget. It could then decide
whether to spend the money on Earth based astronomy or space. If space
it would be free to find the cheapest solution. One part of a cheap
solution that should not be ignored is this. Do you send up a single
entity where if something goes wrong the mission is useless, or do you
send a swarm where the system is failure tolerant? A failure tolerant
system might have a lower development cost with less checking and less
expensive components, but a higher launch cost. Quite clearly that
should be for scientists to decide NASA does not have a role.

One thing for sure. If people were doing this kind of tradeoff we
would be better able to look at the economics of alternatives.


- Ian Parker

.

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