On Mon, 01 Sep 2003 18:11:01 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Dholmes"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

Personally, I think there is going to be sticker shock on Capitol Hill
when someone there finally adds up OSP/ATV/EELV costs and figures out
that it won't save a penny versus the Shuttle. Then there will be a
lot of back-pedalling, talk of waiting for a cheaper launcher to come
along, and another Shuttle service life extension program.

If they can not save money using OSP/ATV/EELV compination then they are
doing it wrong.

There's no way to "do it right." As long as their goals in space
remain so trivial, it will be very expensive from a unit cost basis.
One of the reasons that Shuttle has never been replaced is that
there's no replacement that can be cheaper than continuing to operate
it, once you take into account the development costs and low usage.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
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