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Old May 11th 17, 05:12 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Scott M. Kozel[_2_]
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Default RD-180 relplacement

On Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 8:42:25 AM UTC-4, Fred J. McCall wrote:

"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:

Three separate heavy lift vehicles in development that
would be capable of taking men to the Moon or Mars.


Actually only one 'program'. And two commercial efforts.

I don't really understand that. Last time one vehicle was
developed and they built 16 of them and had programs in
place to use them within a reasonable period of time, that
provided economies of scale and focus to do the program.
It was a national scale program and accomplished great
things.


Last time we had a single government program that spent money like
water, made the trip, and then had no follow-on, which is why we can't
get beyond LEO anymore.

The current approach doesn't make sense; too many vehicle
types in development and no real focus toward building
enough of them to have an actual program.


The 'government program' (how we did Apollo) is the high priced
spread. It's true that it makes no sense because it has no real goal
(it changes with every President) and is too expensive to fly. The
other two efforts are commercial efforts, make more sense, spend a lot
less money, and will be far cheaper to fly.

If we did it the old way, we would ONLY have SLS, Musk and Bezos would
keep their money, and we'd get another 'flags and footprints' mission
to somewhere at best.


What kind of commercial effort for such a vehicle and program
could provide the tens of billions of dollars in private capital
to fund it? What would be the business model?

The federal government could provide 60-80% of the funding, but
that would not be a private sector effort, that would be massive
subsidization by the government.

Sure Apollo was expensive, but I wonder how the private sector
could profitably fund a program like that.