--
When the pin is pulled, Mr Grenade is not our friend. (US Marine Corps)
Try to look unimportant; they may be low on ammo. (Infantry Journal)
If your attack is going too well, you have walked into an ambush. (Infantry
Journal)
Any ship can be a minesweeper... once. (Admiral Hornblower)

"Hop David" wrote in message
...


Sander Vesik wrote:
Hop David wrote:

Much has been written in this newsgroup how economies of scale could
reduce launch costs.

Recently Ariane ordered 30 Ariane 5 Launchers
http://www.arianespace.com/site/news...ase_index.html

Is 30 enough to enjoy substantial savings due to economy of scale?


If you look at
http://www.arianespace.com/site/news...ase_index.html

you'll see - 11 launches (out of world total of 15?) in 2002. satellite
(not launch!) backlog of 40. Three launches thus far in 2003. Which
basicly
meansthe batch of 30 is a contract to supply needs for quite a while.

A few weeks ago someone in sci.space.tech proposed an Andean rail gun in
Ecuador. This caused me to Google for equatorial launch sites which is
how I learned of the existence of Ariane.

Do they have the only equatorial launch site? If so, it seems to me they
enjoy a great advantage.

Sea Launch launches *ON* the equator.