launch

On Thursday, November 21, 2002, at 07:44 AM, Ryan Zelnio wrote:

> I think this trend of lower costs will continue to be
> seen and the true bottom price for ELV is not even
> close to being seen. The russians alone are still
> selling their rockets for an estimated 3 times more
> then they need because the US is forcing them to not
> undercut american markets.

The agreements you are thinking of have expired. The Russians do have
very low costs -- because really good engineers can be hired for a tiny
fraction of the equivalent Western personnel. This can't last forever,
but it does keep prices down for now.

The International Space Station (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr. Tito
going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was old, smelly, crowded and
probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shinny, much more
roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts of how
great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html