[FPSPACE] Jim Oberg's article in /Launchspace/

[wayneday]

>I read your article in the Oct/Nov/Dec 2000 issue of /Launchspace/.

Geez, is that mag still kicking?  I thought they died.


>Later that year, the Russians must have laughed all the way to the bank
>("no, no, don't throw me in the briar patch!") when the Adminstration
>forced them to double their prices just to support an ossified but
>well-connected  industry here that hasn't had an original idea since
>Sputnik went up. Everybody knows that the real potential for economic
>growth, technological spinoffs, creation of new markets, and job security
>lies in the *satellite* industry, not the *launch* industry. Yet who did

I think you're missing the point here--the US chose to support the Russian 
launch industry through the quota system for several reasons.  First and 
foremost, there were a lot of US satellite companies that wanted launches and 
they were exerting pressure for this.  Second, and almost equally important, 
the US launch system was virtually at capacity anyway, so helping the Russians 
was not going to hurt the American launch industry.

There is a flipside to this as well.  Rockets are something that the Russians 
do very well and there were things that the US could gain from this 
arrangement.  In addition, satellites are not something that the Russians do 
well (nobody is clamoring to buy Russian comsats) and so there was no way to 
foster the Russian satellite industry.  (Toss in concerns about transfer of 
military technology--there were a lot of things that the US could teach the 
Russians about satellites and did not want to teach them, whereas there was 
little concern [at the time anyway] that the US would leak any militarily 
significant rocket technology to the Russians since they were already so damn 
good at it.)

The US had and still has the majority of the satellite market and thus was not 
going to do anything to help Russia jeopardize that market.


All that said, I haven't read Oberg's original piece, so I don't know how to 
address your other criticisms.


DDAY