cage@fmeed1.UUCP (Russ Cage) (11/01/90)
In article <6883@hub.ucsb.edu> 3001crad@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Charles Frank Radley) writes: [in response to Allen Sherzer] >+ and almost an order of magnitude reduction in launch >+ costs for large payloads. All that is needed to demonstrate the >+ concept is about 5% of one years spending on Freedom. > >Sounds cheap enough. Let them get on with. But not with my >budget. When I read this, I thought he meant the TAXPAYERS' budget, which left me wondering why a taxpayer would be against saving taxpayers some money, but later he says... > >>Any of those guys coming to southern California any time soon? > >+ Invite them down > >Hah ! I value my job too much. >+ That's an interesting remark. Why would inviting some speakers >+ in get you fired? > >I work for a Freedom contractor. LLNL represents the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >competition. ^^^^^^^^^^^ In other words, if LLNL saves the taxpayers some money, CFR is out of a job. Radley's interests lie in making certain that the LLNL concept is dismissed before being investigated, so that it does not replace the SS. Fred project. As a taxpayer, my interests are different. My interests are: 1.) Determine if the LLNL concept will work, and if so, 2.) Put Charles Frank Radley and all the other contractors working on Fred out on the street post haste. Finally, I noticed a large number of non sequiturs in the quoted article (all by CFR). I think he is scared. Example: >+ They assume launchers will be grounded in their schedules. They >+ assume things won't work and plan for backup approaches when >+they fail. > >Really ? Then their development schedules are even more success >oriented than I thought if they think they already have that >covered. Either CFR doesn't know what "success-orientation" is, or he is misrepresenting the LLNL approach to the net. Neither speaks well for him. Hint, Charles: A "success-oriented" project is one which assumes that all goals will be met and all efforts will succeed, and has no contingency plan if failures occur or schedules slip. NASA's plan allows for no alternate launcher and no launch failures; if any occur, the entire project is likely to fail. Success depends on many launches all working and being more or less on schedule. This is very unlikely, as the events since 1986 have shown. The LLNL plan has no such dependency on specific launchers and does not depend on success of every sub-effort to get a working station. -- Russ Cage Ford Powertrain Engineering Development Department Work: itivax.iti.org!cfctech!fmeed1!cage (CHATTY MAIL NOT ANSWERED HERE) Home: russ@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us (All non-business mail) Member: HASA, "S" division.