Armstrong lauds another spaceman

h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

:On Wed, 08 Feb 2006 05:05:57 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Fred J.
:McCall" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
:in such a way as to indicate that:
:
:
::Most new launch systems
:at least the ones that get formally proposed to the government) only
:ropose to reduce the costs by an order of magnitude or so, if that.
:
:That's what generally happens after downselect.
:
:And generally before.

Not nearly as much, since there's nothing to puncture the fantasy and
let reality in until they actually have to build something.

::In fact, the actual cost of getting a pound to LEO doesn't seem to
::have moved even a single order of magnitude over the entire history of
::real space launchers, much less the two orders of magnitude necessary
::to make 'swamping the problems with mass' really feasible.
::
::Only because there's little demand for it from the traditional
:roviders of launch system development funds.
:
:Largely because they don't believe it can be done and don't want to
:fund yet more development of another system that doesn't hit the
:target (again).
:
:Do you truly believe that a system that cut price to LEO to the $1500
:range wouldn't rapidly become the launch system of choice (assuming
:payload capability similar to what is currently extant)?
:
:Of course not. Do you truly believe that I wrote such a thing?

That's how I read the "...there's little demand for it from the
traditional providers of launch system development funds" comment,
yes.

:Why would commercial users (in particular) stick with a higher-cost
:system, all other things being equal?
:
:They wouldn't. Nice straw man, though. Chock full.

Just going by what you say, Rand. If you don't mean it, don't say it.

:What I said was that there was no demand for it, or at least not
:enough to justify the investment. I didn't say that they wouldn't
refer a cheaper ride if they could get one. But they're obviously
:satisfied with current prices.

We're obviously using a different definition for 'demand'.

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn