In sci.space.policy Rand Simberg wrote:
On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 18:49:43 CST, in a place far, far away, Sander
Vesik made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

And as long as there's no customer for it, there never will be. NASA
could be a chicken to the egg, or the egg to the chicken, but right
now it's not even in the henhouse.


Why should NASA bethe organisation that will act as a government subsidy
dispenser for some loser who cannot get his act and business plan together?

Why should we assume that the problem is "some loser who cannot get
his act and business plan together"?

If he wasn't he wouldn't need to rely on a handful of launches per year
that NASA will provide him. Haven't you noticed just how small number of
trips to space NASA has per year? There is no evidence they would want
radicaly more, no matter how low the cost. There just aren't interesting
places to go to on earth orbit.


This will not give you any additional capability or reliability over present
and will incur additional costs, esp as the entity will essentialy be able
to raise its price arbitrarily and would not need to bother about any kind
of oversight.

Who said there would be a monopoly?

The fact that it will be managed by NASA on behalf of US government? US has one
of the worst track records for making sure they aren't dealing with a single
supplier.


And you are wrong anyways - you can buy manned space access now and the price
very probably reflects present demand.

That's utter nonsense.


Care to substaniate your claim that in a high-demand environment cost of a
space-ride in Soyuz would not go down?

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++