personal opinion

Regardless, I would never support using US tax money to pay Russians
for launch services or hardware.

Public funding requires a public good. Should NASA buy Soyuz
capsules? See how long they will exist if they started doing that.
Fine, the shuttle has flaws. We knew that in the 1970's when it all
began. NASA wanted a tindy space plane and Nixon wouldn't fund it
until the Air Force agreed to put up money, too. But they required an
enlarged craft for reasons better left to the imagination.

NASA ended up with the proverbial 'barrel of sick snakes' after the
AirForce backed out of the program.

Personally, I don't think we are past the research stage yet. No
launch system in existence does everything right yet. The right
design is yet to come and we will never get there until we start
working on them.

I still believe we need a Model-T of space and I don;t see one yet.

--- In ssi_list@... "ian.woollard"
>
> >Second, the Russian hardware is not economically viable in the
> >long run. They are selling hardware for, virtually, food.
> >
> Um. No actually. The Russians make a tidy profit. A Soyuz rocket
costs
> about $5 million to manufacture, the Proton about $6 million. You
need
> to add on the cost of the launch pad, fuel and so forth, but that's
not
> going to be more than 2x more. And they sell launches for $60-85
> million. That means that they have a profit of more than 50% which
ain't
> bad. In fact they've been sandbagging for several years; there was
a
> cartel arrangement that they weren't allowed to undercut American
> launchers by more than a certain percentage; the cartel arrangement
has
> come to its agreed end point in the last couple of years.
>
> > The fees
> >barely cover the costs and leave no funds to further develop the
> >technology. Were it not for surplus military hardware the
Russsians
> >would have no program at all.
> >
> Um. No actually. Neither the Soyuz nor the Proton are surplus
military
> hardware. In fact the Proton never, ever was military; although
some of
> the predecessors were ICBMs; much like most of the American
launchers
> (including Apollo).
>
> >Such sales erode the market base for a true 'space DC-3'. Just as
> >American airplane builders had to wait for the JN-4s of WW1 to
wear
> >out, so will the new space technology builders. The sooner the
> >military-funded designs die off the better for all of us.
> >
> That's a laugh. American launches fall into two camps, more or less:
>
> a) american military launches
> b) NASA Shuttle launches.
>
> Bearing in mind the extremely high cost of Shuttle launches; that's
not