Terrell Miller wrote:
[...]
The simple fact is that *nobody* anywhere, anywhen has sustained the kind of
production for chemical boosters that you insist is a piece of cake. Not
when they didn't have to pay for it. Not when they were getting paid for it.
Not when building lots and lots of rockets was a matter of national
prestige. It just will never happen, *ever*.

I suggest you look at how many Minuteman ICBMs the US built
between 1961 and 1978.

And how fast and how many Trident (C4 and C5) missiles were built.

And how many ICBMs the Russians made...

990 SS-11 SEGO missiles between 1966 and 1972, for that one model
alone. Over 500 SS-18s were built, and over 100 SS-9s before them.
130 SS-17s. 360 SS-19s. 60 SS-13s. 360 SS-25s, and over 100 SS-27s.
90 SS-24s. The total of models that I can quickly inventory is that
post-SS-6, they built at least 2250 ICBMs between 1961 and 1991,
an average of 77 per year, with the peak production in the 1970s and
early 1980s twice that.

Plus the 1600-odd Soyuz launchers which have flown.

Plus, you have not made any qualitative or quantitative
argument as to why shifting money and resources from Bear or
B-52 production into Soyuz or Atlas or whatever wouldn't have
worked to increase production numbers for rockets as opposed
to jetliners, bombers, etc.


-george william herbert