Launch Costs

> From: Robert
> > So you trust nasa, who built the flying brick, but not boeing, who
> built the
> > 747? You might want to take a second look at those safety records.
>
> nasa is not concerned with profit. safety is a much higher priority
> than cost. even your vaulted boeing cant say the same thing.

You're a paranoid nutcase if you think nasa has even a fraction of the
safety record or basic common sense that boeing has. Compare a hundred
flights and two failures (both of which due to the very kind of corruption
you're so happy to atribute to big business) with millions of flights and a
few dozen losses at most for the 747. Do you really think the shuttle is
*safer*?!

You're also a complete twit for scare mongering about 'what big business
will do when it starts launching rockets' when big business is ALREADY
launching rockets. You'll notice sealaunch doesn't operate from downtown LA.
Do you really think they'd do things the way they are if it woul be a simple
matter of bribing a local town mayor to let them launch their rockets next
to the local kinder garden sand pit?

> 5 to 10 seconds into launch, a wire fuses sending a spike into the
> communication system.

So you know nothing about how computers work either do you? A digital flight
computer would not recognise a continous or even intermitant voltage (on an
input channel) as an instruction to do anything. Especially on a PARALLEL
bus! And why talk about THE computer system when there would be
redundencies? Range safety for example would have its own completely
seperate radio reciever, as would the backup range safety package.

> and the ground control cant override due to
> the communticating system is fried.

If it's fried it's dead, and won't interfere with the backup.

> result wild gyrations

Which would destroy the rocket.

> that send the rocket arching
> towards the ground.

In many thousands of tiny pieces.

> military rocket, early in the rocket era did nose over like this.
> they activated the autodestruct with the rocket 15 miles down range.

Though the V2 was in many ways a highly respectable rocket, with a
reliability record exceeding some of it's modern kin, it was built over 60
years ago without any modern safety features modern rockets have. And I'm
pretty sure that's the incident you're talking about.

> yea, just like enron and exxon.

Broken record. Companies like those do not replace their single hull oil
tankers because it would cost several billion dollars per tanker. Even if
they early 'big business' rockets were flawed in some similar way, the whole
point of mass production woudl be to reduce to individual cost to a few
million each, and that each one gets used once. If a serious design flaw is
found there would be no reason not to correct it in all subsequent rockets.

> not right off hand, but i do remember hearing about problems in some
> aircraft that resulted in the entire fleet having to be grounded
> until a flaw was fixed.

You mean big business wasn't able to buy its way out of that one?! I
can't beleive my eyes! It's almost like you're implying that government
bodies have some say over safety regulations!