Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/spacedig/v16_6/v16no695.txt

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Date: Mon,  7 Jun 93 05:28:47
From: Space Digest maintainer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Space Digest V16 #695
To: Space Digest Readers
Precedence: bulk


Space Digest                Mon,  7 Jun 93       Volume 16 : Issue 695

Today's Topics:
           1992 NASA Authorization Budget- shuttle (2 msgs)
                     AP Story on Freedom Redesign
                  Detecting planets in other system
           Dr. Wm. G. Tifft's clustered galactic redshifts
                LE-7 orrection (was Re: Hey Sherz!...)
              manifest destiny = US getting uppity again
                             mass drivers
                            money to burn
              Pres/VP go online with Internet Addresss!
      SETI:  viral mediums and Ukranian radio astronomy (2 msgs)
                       SSTO as an "Investment"
                            Sticker Shock
             Why are SSTO up-front costs rising? (3 msgs)

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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 6 Jun 93 16:31:09
From: Steinn Sigurdsson <[e-mail]>
Subject: 1992 NASA Authorization Budget- shuttle
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Phil G. Fraering) writes:


   [e-mail] (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes:

   >Might I beg to differ here a little and note that aerospace differs
   >from most of the other fields in one small respect: that is the
   >country that excels in aerospace can take the other fields back
   >on a short time scale.
   >You can kill people, directly, with aerospace, and do it fast enough
   >that them embargoing your DRAMs is irrelevant. There honestly is more
   >to this then business and employment.

   One of the worst arguments I've ever seen on this group. If not for
   the ethical side of things, or the historical context, then for the
   simple fact that if you don't have any foundries left that can crank
   out guidance chips...

If all powers co-operate, and have a mutual set of ethics,
then aerospace is no different (with the current technology)
from other technologies. However, if co-operation fails,
the aerospace powers have an edge, with stockpiled spares
they can remain independent of suppliers who were using
their comparative advantage to dominate that market,
while the chip makers are stuck with a bunch of gold trimmed
silicon chips good for jewelry. Also, in the current historical
context, aerospace seems to be the critical technology that
is most likely to be decisive in those nasty, unethical conflicts,
and also one that is hardest to ramp up if you lose it.

   (As if air power worked against the English...)

It worked quite well _for_ them. Think how England
would have fared in 1940 if the RAF had been procuring
all their airplanes from German factories!
Even then, a bad example, air power was only just
becoming critical. Thing if the English Navy had been
constructed by Polish shipyards...

Look at the nations that have maintained, often at
considerable cost, airplane industries. Why Europe
has consistently tried to build their own, why Sweden
maintained Saab aerospace.

|  Steinn Sigurdsson    |I saw two shooting stars last night        |
|  Lick Observatory    |I wished on them but they were only satellites    |
| [e-mail] |Is it wrong to wish on space hardware?        |
| "standard disclaimer"    |I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care - B.B. 1983    |

------------------------------

Date: 6 Jun 1993 20:01:25 -0400
From: Pat <[e-mail]>
Subject: 1992 NASA Authorization Budget- shuttle
Newsgroups: sci.space

I don't know about Saab, and the swedish defense complex,
but The soviets have maintained their aero-space bureaus,
and their basic industries have collapsed.  I don't
see it helping them much.

Many things can be destroyed, but it is harder to build
them up, later.  We could burn japan to the ground,  would
that help us?  i am not real sure.

pat

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1993 23:00:31 GMT
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: AP Story on Freedom Redesign
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space

There is an interesting AP story about the station redesign out today.
I quote part of the story:

   In advance of that report, a NASA official clost to the redesign
   process spoke with reporters Saturday on condition that he not
   be identified publicly. The anonymity enabled him to speak with
   unusual candor for a government official.

   "We never told the American people really how much the space
   station would cost", he said.

   That was vindication for congressional critics and other
   analysts, such as the GAO, who have said for years that
   NASA sold its big programs to Congress by fudging on their
   costs.

I told ya Dennis, but you wouldn't believe me!

  Allen
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Lady Astor:   "Sir, if you were my husband I would poison your coffee!"   |
| W. Churchill: "Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it."             |
+----------------------10 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX-----------------------+

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1993 21:20:42 GMT
From: Frank Crary <[e-mail]>
Subject: Detecting planets in other system
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
>>But your approach won't work: You can't "put the star on a null, with
>>the planet at a peak" since you have no idea where the planet is...

>Actually, you ought to be able to make a fair guess:  assume that you will
>get a Jupiter-like planet at about the distance where it gets cold enough
>for such a body to retain hydrogen.  Not a sure thing, but the odds ought
>to be fairly good.

You could make a fair guess at the radius of the planet's orbit this
way, but putting the planet at the peak of an interference pattern is
much more difficuty: It's the angular seperation, not the radius
that is required. That's a function of the orbital radius, inclination
of the orbital plane to the observer and the position of the planet
along its orbit. The last two factors can't be estimated.

                                                    Frank Crary
                                                    CU Boulder

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1993 21:01:40 GMT
From: James Salsman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Dr. Wm. G. Tifft's clustered galactic redshifts
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space

I was reading about Dr. William G. Tifft of the University
of Arizona and how, sixteen years ago, he found evidence
that, after correcting for planetary rotation, orbit, and
solar galactic orbit, the redshifts of galaxies were not
randomly distributed as would have been expected, but fell
into clusters.  This was reciently confirmed by astronomers
at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, Scotland.  I don't
have the proper citations, but if anyone reading this does,
please send them to me.  My source was reprinted last
October from the New York Times Wire Service.

In that article, the only explanation proposed was quantum
gravity which I have never been able to understand, and I
seriously doubt that many of the proponents of quantum
gravity do either.

I think that a large scale topological explanation is much
easier to envision, and it is probably verifiable,
eventually, depending on the resolution of images of
galaxies at a distance of one and two clusters.

What I am proposing is that the spatial universe is
topologically closed: non-euclidian eliptical space, like
the three-dimensional analog of a sphere or torus.  So, the
second cluster of galactic redshifts is what we view from
"twice around the sphere."  Verification would be a matter
of finding similarities between galaxies in the first and
second clusters.

I am open to and welcome any comments and critisism, but
sci.astro expires faster than I can read it around here,
so please send me a copy if you followup.  Thanks.

--
:James Salsman
::Bovik Research

Dear Tipper, please help start Divorce Education programs for parents of minors

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1993 22:16:22 GMT
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: LE-7 orrection (was Re: Hey Sherz!...)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Paul Dietz) writes:


>> failed. LE-7 problems are mainly related to the expander cycel they
>> selected.


>Allen: you mean the staged combustion cycle they selected.

I did indeed. Thanks for the correction.

    Allen
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Lady Astor:   "Sir, if you were my husband I would poison your coffee!"   |
| W. Churchill: "Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it."             |
+----------------------10 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX-----------------------+

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1993 00:05:52 GMT
From: "Phil G. Fraering" <[e-mail]>
Subject: manifest destiny = US getting uppity again
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:

>We'll try to get the word out, but these things don't always work as planned.

>We contemplated running a smash-and-grab raid on the Air&Space Museum --
>whose loss is the one aspect of the destruction that I will personally
>regret -- beforehand, but decided that might be too much of a giveaway.
>--
>Altruism is a fine motive, but if you   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
>want results, greed works much better.  |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

Very well, Henry, you give me no choice. I didn't want to do something
this destructive, even to save the nation, but your threat of destroying
the NASM gives me no choice.

Operation Casino Royale Storm has been put on Defcom 5 status. Anything
remotely suspicious happens, it'll go to 6.

(For those of you who don't know, this is a special sealed railway
car equipped with slot machines, roulette tables, etc., all designed
to keep the occupant, Edwin Edwards, occupied while it rolls to
Quebec, where it shuts down and disgourges its passenger. Then
the real destruction begins.)

--

+-----------------------+"Somewhere in the back of her mind, she had always
|Phil Fraering          |had a vision of the Slowness as a stifling darkness
|[e-mail] |lit at best by torches, the domain of cretins and
+-----------------------+mechanical calculators." - Vernor Vinge,
                                                 _A Fire Upon the Deep_

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1993 00:01:36 GMT
From: "Phil G. Fraering" <[e-mail]>
Subject: mass drivers
Newsgroups: sci.space

[e-mail] (Nick Janow) writes:

>[e-mail] (Paul Dietz) writes:

>> However, remember that the acceleration portion was only one part of the
>> system: there was also to be a part downstream of the accelerator where
>> (lateral) velocity errors were measured and corrected.  I've always had the
>> impression that was one of the more problematic parts of the system (the
>> mass catcher at the far Lagrange point was another).

>That sounds like a basic--though not trivial--engineering problem, and
>there's no reason to believe it would be particularly difficult to solve.  I
>can imagine that the driver would originally have only moderate accuracy, but
>after a few years of operation, be extremely accurate.  You could have
>several stages of correction; the last might be a laser system which
>vaporizes small patches off the side of the container, giving tiny
>corrections.  All this is tied into a neural net with laser tracking, solar
>wind measurements, etc.

*Sigh*...

SSI eventually fixed this problem in Mass drivers II and III by
setting it up so that the coils only _pulled_ the bucket, making the
center of the assembly a point of stable equilibrium instead of
unstable equilibrium. (I may have the phrasing wrong.)


--

+-----------------------+"Somewhere in the back of her mind, she had always
|Phil Fraering          |had a vision of the Slowness as a stifling darkness
|[e-mail] |lit at best by torches, the domain of cretins and
+-----------------------+mechanical calculators." - Vernor Vinge,
                                                 _A Fire Upon the Deep_

------------------------------

Date: 6 Jun 1993 22:42:17 GMT
From: Jeff Bytof - SIO <[e-mail]>
Subject: money to burn
Newsgroups: sci.space

>The police say the lights don't lead to an
>increase in crime, which is the only serious objection.
>Guess the city feels they have money to burn: sodium lighting is cheaper
>to buy, install, run, and maintain.

I hear that San Diego has one of the lowest paid police forces in the
state: perhaps that extra "money to burn" should go towards beefing up
their salaries.  I don't see how turning up the lights is going to
make much difference in the crime rate.

-rabjab


------------------------------

Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1993 21:14:05 GMT
From: Dave Michelson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Pres/VP go online with Internet Addresss!
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Phil G. Fraering) writes:
>
>>Well, Bush set a good precedent, and then there was Nixon, and before
>>him Johnson, not to mention Truman...
>
>Yah. Of the three you've mentioned, people only like Truman.
>The United States has been going through Vice President Aversion
>Therapy.

Truman started the cycle of events that led to the Vietnam War by not
responding to Ho Chih Minh's requests for U.S. assistance in gaining
independence from France.  By the time LBJ got around to offering the
North a Mekong Delta project that would "completely dwarf" the TVA in
exchange for peace, democracy, and a Vietnam for the Vietnamese,
Ho was no longer interested and America was almost torn apart
during the five years that followed....

Yeah, I can see why Truman would be popular....

--
Dave Michelson  --  [e-mail]  --  University of British Columbia



------------------------------

Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1993 20:40:23 GMT
From: James Salsman <[e-mail]>
Subject: SETI:  viral mediums and Ukranian radio astronomy
Newsgroups: alt.sci.planetary,sci.space,sci.astro

These references and notes are a repost of something I had to
cancel in order to keep a mailbox that I didn't know existed
from getting deluged.  Sorry if you see it twice.

:James

-----

"Is Bacteriophage \phi X174 DNA a Message from an Extraterrestrial
Intelligence?" Hiromitsu Yokoo and Tairo Oshima, _Icarus_ vol. 38,
pp. 148-153 (1979.)

"SV40 DNA---A Message from \epsilon ERI?" Hiroshi Nakamura,
_Acta_Astronautica_, vol. 13, No. 9, pp. 573-578 (1986.)

-----

This information is from a technical report written by A. V. Arkhipov
of the Akademiya Nauk URSR Kharkov Institute of Radio-Physics and
Electronics in the Ukrane.  The Arkhipov article is available from
NTIS under the report number INIS-SU-25/A.  It was published in 1986,
but has not yet been translated by any of the American SETI labs that
I have contacted.

According to the tranlation of the abstract, there are four stars
within 20 parsecs that are "solar-type" and also are in the same

direction as "continous isotropic radioemmision" sources in the
hundred to thousand megahertz range.  The probability of such
emmissions being accidental was declared to be 2x10^-4.

This information below was gleaned from the text, with the help of
several European star catalogs and a technical Russian-English
dictionary from the Carnegie-Mellon University Engineering and
Science Library, the SIMBAD database, courtesy S.A.O./Harvard and a
friend from Pittsburgh fluent in Russian (Thanks, Inna!)

These are the four stars that Arkhipov says are the probable
locations of extraterrestrial civilazations:

Catalog   Right  (1950)  Dec-  Visual   Absolute  Spectral  Distance  Radial
Number    Ascention  lination      Magnitude      Type      (light    Velocity
========  =========  ========  ======   ========  ========  =years)=  =(km/s)=

HD 21899   3h28m27s  -41d 32'   6.11      6.60      F6V       39.3      +16.2
or HR 1076 or GC 4199   (In southern Eridanus, near the 4th mag. y Eridani)

HD100623  11h32m03s  -32d 34'   6.06      6.00      dK1V      33.1      -23
or HR 4458 or GC 15873 or DM-32 8179 (In middle Hydra near Zeta Hydrae)

HD187691  19h32m03s  +10d 17'   5.16      3.75      dF8V      68.0       -1
or Omicron Aquillae or CG 27480 or GL 768.1A or 54 Aql (Just north of Altair)

HD187923  19h49m43s  +11d 30'   6.15      3.1       G0V      135.9      -17
or HR 7569 or GC 27510 (Just about twice as far north of Altair)

Here are the frequencies at which these stars were said to emit
continous isotropic and/or periodic radioemmissions:

Star        Signal (MHz)   Current (see note)
=========   ============   ==================
HD 21899       408           1.64 +or- 0.17
              2700           0.19 +or- 0.03

HD 100623      408           0.86 +or- 0.05
              1415           0.13 +or- 0.03  (In the Waterhole Band)
              2700           0.21 +or- 0.02

HD 187691      178           2.4  +or- 0.5
               408           0.85 +or- 0.05

HD 187923      178           2.4  +or- 0.5
               408           2.02 +or- 0.77
              1420           2.8  +or- 1.0  (In the Waterhole Band)
              3200          <0.5

Note: I am not sure what units "current" is being expressed in.
Neither the Russian-English dictionary that I consulted or my
Russian-speaking friend could help me figure out the discussion of
this unit, which apparently included thermodynamics as well as
electromagnetic technicalities.  The Cyrilic symbol used for this
unit looks like <backward-R><small-capital-H>.

The waterhole band is that area of the radiofrequency
sprectrum between the primary emission lines of H and OH,
which many scientists think would be indicative of water,
and therby life, and therefore an ideal place for
interstellar communications.  On a related note, I think
that all of Arkhipov's stars are emitting at 408 MHz is
remarkable.  Maybe he only had a few settings on his tuner.



--
:James Salsman
::Bovik Research

Dear Tipper, please help start Divorce Education programs for parents of minors

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1993 23:22:42 GMT
From: Leigh Palmer <[e-mail]>
Subject: SETI:  viral mediums and Ukranian radio astronomy
Newsgroups: alt.sci.planetary,sci.space,sci.astro

In article <[e-mail]> James Salsman,
[e-mail] writes:
>According to the tranlation of the abstract, there are four stars
>within 20 parsecs that are "solar-type" and also are in the same
>direction as "continous isotropic radioemmision" sources in the
>hundred to thousand megahertz range.  The probability of such
>emmissions being accidental was declared to be 2x10^-4.

While I suspect this is simply a crackpot article, I can correct
one erroneous calculation. The probability of any given star being
in the same direction as continuous isotropic radio emission is
not 2x10^-4. Since isotropic emission comes from all directions
the probability of any given star being in one of those is unity. The
probability of it being in all of them is zero.

Leigh

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 6 Jun 93 14:17:34 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jim Bowery)
Subject: SSTO as an "Investment"

Matthew DeLuca writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer)
writes:
>>I myself, would prefer to bit the bullet today.
>
>Problem is, you can't assume here that SSTO will work;..

This is the basic problem with the DDTE amortization interest rate
Sherzer uses.  In order to do the amortization correctly, you have
to use the interest rates that would prevail if junk bonds were
floated to fund the SSTO.  That's how U.S. Sprint did their "high
tech data super highway" optical fiber with private capital, for
example.

Any investor must multiply the prime interest rate by the odds that
his current investment won't pay off in order to determine what kind
of rate of return he demands.  The "dumber" the capital, the larger
that perceived risk will be and therefore the larger the multiplier.

Since we have made it a national policy to take money from inventors
and give it to bureaucrats and the idle rich, our capital markets and
government funding agencies are dominated by "dumb" capital.  The
interest on advanced technology junk bonds is likely to be very high.


( BTW: THAT is why technology is stalled in this country.  Channeling
  more money through government bureaucracies or giving more tax-
  breaks to those who already sit on piles of private wealth will only
  make things worse.

  Remember:  The ultimate tool of "capital formation" is to confiscate
  everyone's income and "form" it into one big pile of capital in the
  U.S. Treasury.  "Capital formation" is worse than capital dispersion
  if the capital is being formed in dumb hands by statutory incentives.
  The last thing we need is more political geniuses cum technical idiots
  bossing genuine technologists around.  (Hopefully I have made enemies
  of Democrats, Republicans AND Libertarians in this statement.) )

I'm not sure what interest rate the market would demand of its
investments in the SSTO, but I, as an investor, would demand an
ENORMOUS interest rate (like 500% per year) for the following reasons:

* There is government money involved.  That tends to create
  bad incentives and politically driven priorities that might
  put my return on investment in second place compared to some
  political agenda.

* MD is a company that has already grown used to sucking on
  the government tit rather than delivering competitive commercial
  products on its own, and this is on the government, rather than
  commercial, end of MD.

* The projected lowering of cost/lb to LEO at volume is comparable
  to that already being offered by E'Prime Aerospace, which is
  doing virtually no technology development, instead using the whole
  Peacekeeper system design with minimal design modification (contrast
  systems designs of OSC's Taurus or Lockheed's newly announced solid
  launch services).  Further, Russian and Chinese launchers
  are also positioned to undercut the projected market.  All three
  technologies, Peacekeeper, Proton and Long March, are ready to go
  now.

* By the time SSTO hits the market, other technologies, like AMROC's
  hybrids or Bob Truax's simplified booster designs could easily
  be hitting the launch services market and lower costs even further.
  All it takes is a little of that mountain of Chinese capital now
  flowing into Vancouver to leak into one of these companies.

* The single point risks of the loss of one SSTO bird would have
  a much larger impact on business viability than the single point
  risks of the loss of any expendible on SSTO's competitors.

* From a first-order system's design standpoint, the SSTO's use of
  high isp fuel from lift-off is highly questionable, even given
  the system simplifications of using one fuel.  If using one fuel
  is so valuable, Truax's approach of using a lower isp kerosene
  throughout the flight appears more rational from a total system
  economy standpoint.  (The ultimate antithesis to the "high velocity
  puff-ball at lift-off" approach is E'Prime's use of the Peacekeeper
  steam cannon ejector, which essentially uses the Earth itself
  as reaction mass for the first stage.)

All in all, even though I'm not very interested in chemical propulsion
anymore (I see high density aneutronic fusion propulsion just around
 the corner) I still see some differences between various chemical-
based launch services and the SSTO comes up way down on the list
of viable investments.

------------------------------

Date: 6 Jun 1993 21:37:29 GMT
From: Jeff Bytof - SIO <[e-mail]>
Subject: Sticker Shock
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space

Headline from today's AP story: "NASA admits soaring costs of
space station - Expect 'sticker shock' in options for Clinton"

If nominating a liberal comrade-in-arms to a government position
puts Clinton on "indefensible ground", then how can we expect him
to support "the government's most expensive research program ever"?

Oh, I forgot, he's a tax-and-spend democrat first, a liberal democrat
second.

-rabjab

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1993 22:47:14 GMT
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Why are SSTO up-front costs rising?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew DeLuca) writes:

>>I never took debate class or was on a debate team.

>Maybe you should have. :-)

I think I'm doing OK. After all, I convinced Ken that Shuttle flights
cost a cool half billion each.

>I think we have different views on government financing things.  For myself,
>I consider the government a black hole of finance (I am sure we agree here!)

Yep.

>and any money it spends can be considered gone.

Sure it can but I consider this a bad thing.

>Since the R&D money is gone
>forever and the group making and selling the hardware (MacDac) is not the
>group who spend the money in the first place (the government) it makes sense
>to write it off.

Execpt that of the total DC cost, only about 10% could be fairly called
R. The remaining 90% is D and since those costs can be recovered, they
should be recovered.

>Making MacDac pay back costs of R&D would be an effective
>heavy tax on Delta Clipper production; the absolute worst possible thing that
>could happen.

Except for two things:

1. Whoever buys and operates thest things will make a lot of money. They
   can and shold pay development.
2. Subsidizing MacDac spacecraft will do a lot of harm to competitors who
   will need to pay their own DDT&E. It will be almost impossible for
   anybody else to enter the market for a very long time. In the long run
   this will keep prices much higher than if we made MacDac pay DDT&E
   back so competitors can enter the market. Lockheed, for example, has
   a nice design which, while riskier, could be cheaper than DC. But their
   design can't stand up to government subsided competition.

     Allen

--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Lady Astor:   "Sir, if you were my husband I would poison your coffee!"   |
| W. Churchill: "Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it."             |
+----------------------10 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX-----------------------+

------------------------------

Date: 6 Jun 1993 19:23:20 -0400
From: Matthew DeLuca <[e-mail]>
Subject: Why are SSTO up-front costs rising?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew DeLuca) writes:

>>and any money it spends can be considered gone.

>Sure it can but I consider this a bad thing.

Vote Libertarian. :-)

>>Since the R&D money is gone
>>forever and the group making and selling the hardware (MacDac) is not the
>>group who spend the money in the first place (the government) it makes sense
>>to write it off.

>Execpt that of the total DC cost, only about 10% could be fairly called
>R. The remaining 90% is D and since those costs can be recovered, they
>should be recovered.

Yes, but.  Why should it fall to MacDac to recover the costs?  The government
spent the money, let the government recover the costs.

It's probably instructive to think for a second here on exactly how
government finance works.  Government money comes from a number of sources,
but the vast majority of them in the end come from the people and corporations
of this country.  When the government spends money, again, the vast majority
of it goes to the people and corporations of this country.  If we ask MacDac
to recover the money, presumably they have to give it to the government,
since the government spent the R&D in the first place.  In effect, we take
money from the corporation, filter it through bureaucrats, and then give it
back.  What is the point?

>>Making MacDac pay back costs of R&D would be an effective
>>heavy tax on Delta Clipper production; the absolute worst possible thing that
>>could happen.

>Except for two things:

>1. Whoever buys and operates thest things will make a lot of money. They
>   can and shold pay development.

Why?  If the money was spent by a company, sure.  But since it was the
government spending the money for its own purposes, the fact that someone
else profits is a plus, not a minus.

>2. Subsidizing MacDac spacecraft will do a lot of harm to competitors who
>   will need to pay their own DDT&E. It will be almost impossible for
>   anybody else to enter the market for a very long time.

This is a good point, and I'm not sure how to fix it; my best thought is to
make the technical data on the resultant vehicle public domain among
American aerospace corporations.  I'm not sure how well this would work,
but I can't think of a better solution right off.  I don't think making
MacDac pay several billion dollars is the appropriate answer; it would
be a shame to have a working SSTO but have the manufacturer go bankrupt
trying to market it.
--
Matthew DeLuca
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
uucp:      ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!matthew
Internet: [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1993 23:53:39 GMT
From: "Allen W. Sherzer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Why are SSTO up-front costs rising?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew DeLuca) writes:

>>>and any money it spends can be considered gone.

>>Sure it can but I consider this a bad thing.

>Vote Libertarian. :-)

I frequently do. However, this woldn't be a libertarian view. They would
say Government shouldn't be investing in the first place.

>>Execpt that of the total DC cost, only about 10% could be fairly called
>>R. The remaining 90% is D and since those costs can be recovered, they
>>should be recovered.

>Yes, but.  Why should it fall to MacDac to recover the costs?  The government
>spent the money, let the government recover the costs.

Exactly. The government owns most (but not all) of the design. They should
lease their part of the design to MacDac so their costs are recovered. If
you are worried about driving MacDac under, no problem. They pay only if
vehicles sell.

>It's probably instructive to think for a second here on exactly how
>government finance works.  Government money comes from a number of sources,
>but the vast majority of them in the end come from the people and corporations
>of this country.  When the government spends money, again, the vast majority
>of it goes to the people and corporations of this country.  If we ask MacDac
>to recover the money, presumably they have to give it to the government,
>since the government spent the R&D in the first place.  In effect, we take
>money from the corporation, filter it through bureaucrats, and then give it
>back.  What is the point?

I as a taxpayer don't like seeing my tax dollars used to help MacDac
build a monopoly on launchers. The bottom line is your way adds $5B in
defficits my daughter must pay off. My way doesn't.

>>1. Whoever buys and operates thest things will make a lot of money. They
>>   can and shold pay development.

>Why?

Because as a taxpayer I don't like the idea of giving MacDac $5B to
freeze out competition in the launcher buisness.

>>2. Subsidizing MacDac spacecraft will do a lot of harm to competitors who
>>   will need to pay their own DDT&E. It will be almost impossible for
>>   anybody else to enter the market for a very long time.

>This is a good point, and I'm not sure how to fix it; my best thought is to
>make the technical data on the resultant vehicle public domain among
>American aerospace corporations.  I'm not sure how well this would work,

I don't think it would. First of all, MacDac still has a huge advantage
since they actually built the thing. The military has done things like
this in the past and it usually doesn't work.

Second of all, much of the design of DC is based on propriatary research
of MacDac. They wouldn't want it given away to their competitors.

>but I can't think of a better solution right off.

Well we cold have them pay for it. That way the taxpayers the the launcher
for less money, the deficit doesn't grow, and competitors aren't frozen out.

>I don't think making
>MacDac pay several billion dollars is the appropriate answer; it would
>be a shame to have a working SSTO but have the manufacturer go bankrupt
>trying to market it.

Wouldn't be the first time. Almost all the early PC makers who pioneered
the technology went under. But an arangement could be made to allow both
the feds to recover the costs and MacDac not go under if there is no
market.

  Allen

--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Lady Astor:   "Sir, if you were my husband I would poison your coffee!"   |
| W. Churchill: "Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it."             |
+----------------------10 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX-----------------------+

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End of Space Digest Volume 16 : Issue 695
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