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

[Robert G Kennedy III]

DDAY replied:

>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.

We had a hearing about this. What the satellite companies really wanted in
1994 was no launch quotas at all, and the ability to catch a ride on cheap
command-economy rockets. (Logic being, if the vending command economy chose
to lose money on the launch, that wasn't the customer's problem.) They
didn't get want they wanted. However, like the old Rolling Stones song
says, they did get what they needed - access to just enough capacity - but
they had to pay top dollar for it. Some folks felt that since they were
paying $200-300 million to build the payload, what did it matter paying an
extra $20-30 million for the bird? (Answer: $20-30 million, that's what.)

I've been studying national (not just USA's) military-industrial complexes
since the early 80s, and they've never made any economic sense to me. And,
considering that more weapons make everyone less secure, not more (cf.
Richardson /Statistics of Deadly Quarrels/), they don't make a lot of sense
from other points of view either.

A note to Asif in particular, given his new book. Yes, I know the Soviet
design bureaux were not monolithic, but I hope he will grant me that the
RKK Energiya and Khrunichev enterprises are rather alike. "Same vendors" in
this instance means "quite similar to" rather than the mathematical
"identically equal".


--
Robert Kennedy, PE
http://www.ultimax.com