On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 13:49:41 -0800, Richard Morris
wrote:



Rand Simberg wrote:

On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 19:17:41 GMT, in a place far, far away, Fred J.
McCall made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

(Rand Simberg) wrote:

:On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 15:33:48 GMT, in a place far, far away, Fred J.
:McCall made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
:such a way as to indicate that:
:
:::Of course there is, but we're talking about developing systems that it
:::is claimed are easy to do and will have a huge market (which is a big
:::piece of the rest of the business plan).
:::
:::But up until now, the "huge market" part generated a great deal of
:::skepticism. That's what's kept it from happening, not the
:::technological side.
::
::That doesn't seem to track, either. One need merely look at the
::number of current launches. Being able to come up with a reliable and
::inexpensive launcher would quite obviously allow you to capture a lot
::of those existing launches, even if lower launch costs didn't enlarge
::the market.
::
::That doesn't constitute enough business to amortize the development
::costs. You need a much bigger market than that. The claim is that
::it's easy to do, not that it's inexpensive to do. It still takes a
::lot of up-front investment.
:
:If it takes that much up front investment in "development costs", then
:it is *NOT* "easy".
:
:What's not "easy" is raising the money, not designing and developing
:the launch system. The latter isn't a big deal, given the appropriate
:investment.

If it's "not a big deal" then why does it cost so much, Rand?

Major aerospace development programs cost a lot. Even developing an
airliner takes billions. That doesn't mean that it's technically
difficult. There's very little technical risk to the 7E7.

We appear to be using different definitions for 'easy'. Yours seems
to be "I don't need to invent any totally new technologies or engage
in magic". Mine is "I can put it together out of off-the-shelf
parts".

We will use off-the-shelf parts wherever feasible, but there is still a great
deal of cusom design work in a project of that magnitude. What will be
off-the-shelf is the required technologies.


Even COTS components are very expensive, guidance systems, telemetry
processors, power control systems, batteries, telemetry transmitters. Are
you also prepared to write all the specs to give to the companies that
build all the "off-the-shelf required technology"? Those specs are required
to insure you get the items you really need. Also where are you going to
do your testing? Or for that matter where are you going to build your
launch tower, control center, range safety center? Where are you going to
get your weather info before launch? Are you going to launch your own
sounding rockets for that weather info? Or do you plan on relying on the
internet to give you real time high alt wind data? You are seriously
underestimating what is really involved with a rocket launch, or developing
a new one. But when you are ready, I'll be glad to spend your money as a
consultant, because you sure are going to need one.

-JATO
http://jatobservatory.org