[FPSPACE] Beal Aerospace

[Dwayne Allen Day]

On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, Robert G Kennedy III wrote:

> "Statement from Andrew Beal Regarding Cease of
> Operations by Beal Aerospace"

> : put our entire business at risk. The most
> : insurmountable risk is the desire of the U.S.
> : government and NASA to subsidize competing
> : launch systems. NASA has embarked on a plan to
> : develop a "second generation" launch system that
> : will be subsidized by U.S. taxpayers and that
> : will compete directly with the private sector.

There has been a very interesting discussion of this on the
Usenet newsgroup sci.space.policy.  In particular, they are arguing over
whether or not Beal's claim that "NASA killed me" is correct.

As you all may be aware, there is a significant space activist community
that blames NASA for all the problems with low cost access to space.  They
are quick to jump in and say that Beal is correct.  But others have
pointed out that Beal started this effort a few years *after* NASA had
made its decisions concerning X-33/Venture Star.  So it seems a little
ingenuous of him to blame them for undermining him when he knew what was
going on all along.  (Besides, who now thinks that Venture Star will ever
happen?)

I think that Beal Aerospace, like MirCorp, highlights some fundamental
facts of space:

-this stuff costs a lot
-it takes years to show a profit
-the markets are fickle and not easy



DDAY