Revival of Energia

John Savard wrote:
On 12 Jan 2004 10:16:41 -0800, (Patrick Underwood)
wrote, in part:

It is clear that the Moon/Mars program is going to be international,
with Russia playing a role. Assigning the heavy lifting job to the
Russians would provide a major boost for their economy and national
prestige

Trouble is, if the American taxpayers are paying for the program, they
will expect the jobs to stay at home. And since every penny spent on
imports has to be earned by the sale of exports, and we can't
(although I admit the U.S. has tried) force people to buy our
products, the response to an increase in imports is to throw people
out of work until they can't afford imported products, when tariffs
are not permitted by treaties such as the WTO.

If Russia could get rid of organized crime - instead, there are
suspicions it has friends in high places in government - or at least
reduce it to the dull roar it is in the U.S., one can't ask more of
Russia than we do - making it stronger might be less of a dangerous
thing.

Unfortunately, Russia getting rid of organised crime or its presence
in all levels of their police and internal security forces (never
mind local industry / governemt) - or really even seriously reducing
it - would probably take at least another, if not couple of such,
complete overthrow of the system.

Take any really rotten latin american state and multiply it by 10. And
then scale it up to be Russia-sized.


John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Patrick Underwood wrote:
So You say the discussion is moot anyway?

No, just that I don't know the answer, and doubt anyone else does
either, at this point. I would love to see the Russians use their
dearly-paid-for Energia for a purpose a bit more noble than
cold-warring with the Americans. There they sit, all the components
necessary for a heavy-lift vehicle that would cost billions of dollars
for the US to develop itself. Seems like somebody should consider the
economic and technical pros and cons.

Spending billions is going to be called "creating jobs", and anyway
I believe developing a heavy lift launcher is not going to be the most
expensive item of the return to moon, not by a long way.

If time were constrained, Energia would have a chance: reviving the
assembly line (and adding the famous hole to the plants side ;-)
would be a lot faster than Shuttle C, extra-heavy versions of Atlas
and Delta, or revival and reworking of Saturn V. A from the scratch
launcher would take even longer, but NASA has time 'til 2020, which
should suffice even for items like new engines. (OK, say the
launcher must be ready in 2015, but thats 12 years.)

The only chance I see for Energia is if a low-risk backup-solution
is desired, which is also available earlier so that test may begin
earlier. And if the russians are willing to sell the plans (maybe
the tools also) to L* or B*, without building and launching more
hardware outside the US.

Regards

Robert Kitzmueller