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- From: roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov (John Roberts)
- Subject: Re: DC-Y funding
- Message-ID: <C0HJEq.DrA.1@cs.cmu.edu>
- X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
- Sender: news+@cs.cmu.edu
- Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology formerly National Bureau of Standards
- Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU
- Distribution: sci
- Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 13:12:45 GMT
- Approved: bboard-news_gateway
- Lines: 49
-
-
- -From: aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer)
- -Subject: Re: DC-Y funding
- -Date: 7 Jan 93 02:48:15 GMT
-
- -In article <C0Fq3r.Dyu.1@cs.cmu.edu> roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov (John Roberts) writes:
-
- ->The Shuttle only launches about eight times a year, and represents relatively
- ->few subsidized GAS cans, mid-deck experiments, etc. Is the market really
- ->*that* small?
-
- -In testimony before the House Space Subcommittee, Dennis Dunbar, VP of
- -the Space Systems Division at GD said that if Government bought launch
- -services in a commercial and competative manner then costs would be
- -roughly cut in half.
-
- -Yes the market is that small and government policies and systems (like
- -Shuttle) are sending prices up and not down.
-
- ->(And if these incidental payloads were not subsidized, the market
- ->might be even smaller.)
-
- -Not so. If NASA implements the voucher system authorized in last years
- -authorization bill they could launch more payloads for less cost. There
- -is a difference between providing subsidies for a hugely expensive system
- -like Shuttle and giving somebody enough money to launch their own payload.
- -The latter encourages greater reliance on lower cost systems.
-
- I was thinking of the commercial (rather than government) payload market.
- The Shuttle has lots of "nooks and crannies" for small payloads, and if
- the government is using the Shuttle anyway for the large payloads and
- human-tended experiments, then there's very little marginal cost to the
- government in also using the Shuttle for small payloads (particularly those
- which need to be returned to Earth after several days in orbit), so
- the idea of "subsidization" would mainly be relevant to non-government
- users who are presumably deciding whether to use the Shuttle or some
- commercial launcher to lift their payloads.
-
- You seem to be implying that the market even for small payloads is almost
- exclusively government-funded - that the private sector for the most part
- just isn't interested in launches of small payloads - because if there were
- a private market, and if commercial launchers were cheaper to the customer
- even with the subsidized prices of GAS cans, etc. on the Shuttle, then the
- private customers would choose the private launchers even with the current
- setup.
-
- John Roberts
- roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov
-
-