(Derek Lyons) writes:

jeff findley wrote:
Expendables didn't "get" popular. The only entity trying to reuse
launch vehicles is NASA (and perhaps the carrier planes used by
Pegasus), and they've had a very poor record of reducing costs by
using a "reusable" vehicle.

When a single instance can change your figure of merit significantly,
that means your figure of merit is not a reliable guide. This is true
whether analyzing safety statistics as in determining which approach
is better than another.

That was my point. There is only one "reusable" vehicle, so how
could expendables "get popular" when they've been doing the bulk of
the lifting all along?

Or to put it simply; Once again, your argument can be reduced to
'Apollo was cool, Soyuz is cool, the Shuttle sucks. Therefore all
capsules are cool and all winged vehicles suck.'

That's not what I meant at all. I was replying to this:

Expandables got popular when the russians were able to offer a seat for 20
million bucks to tourists. And they got popular whenever the shuttle was
delayed (and now grounded) while Soyuz/Progress always launch on time.

Expendables didn't "get popular" because the Russians started selling
seats for $20 million. Besides the shuttle (and the aircraft which
lifts Pegasus), expendables are the *only* way to get anything into
orbit. Furthermore, you can't launch anything commercially, including
people, on the world's only "reusable" vehicle, so it was *never* in
commercial competition with those $20 million Soyuz seats.

Commercial launches on the shuttle were banned after Challenger. This
put a bad taste in the mouths of many who had to "go back" to
expendables. This has nothing to do with the shuttle versus capsule
debate. It does have something to say about the government monopoly
on human space flight issue (which will hopefully change soon).

Jeff
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