Launch Costs

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Ian Woollard"
wrote:
>
> Not necessarily. You would only not test each component if each
> component coming off the line was statistically passing all the
tests anyway.
>
> Garbage. You don't launch anywhere near a city. And rockets burn
> nearly all their fuel early on in the flight. By the time you
overfly
> any city, you're *way* downrange and the amount of propellant in the
> rocket is small, and the chances of hitting the city smaller still
> because you are going so fast.
>
there is a difference between "near" for a car and "near" for a
rocket. when the columbia exploded it was almost a hundred miles down
range many of the components could have killed ppl if they had not
been above the ocean. even then the guidance system had been working
and it was extreamly high. imagine if the guidance system went
haywire in the first seconds of launch. it could easily hit a city a
hundred miles away in a matter of seconds. military launches are
designed to be destroyed if they go a short bit off course. would
civilian's be so willing to have their precious cargo at risk of a
deliberate explosion. would the ppl building them be willing to
sacrifice the weight to carry the explosives when they were seldom
used. the likely answer is no. which means that when the rocket goes
off course the only thing that will stop it is an impact with the
earth. with that kind of rocket fuel, it would make a big impact on
any kind of city.
>
> No. The production line is everything. If the production line is
> engineered correctly you only test the rocket components to ensure
> that the production line is working properly. If the production line
> is working properly you can calculate the proportion of items coming
> off the production line that are faulty.
>
if its is something like cars, that is ok. if something is majorly
wrong, its not difficult to issue a recall. its kind of hard to have
a recall for a rocket that has turned a town of 10000 ppl into a
swiming pool