mentat@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Robert Dorsett) (09/29/89)
In article <45e95c54.71d0@apollo.HP.COM> rehrauer@apollo.COM (Steve Rehrauer) writes: >In article <4983@omepd.UUCP> larry@omews10.intel.com (Larry Smith) writes: >What are we talking about here, a Chevy for getting to space or a whizzier >Concorde for trans-oceanic flights? My understanding is that the Concorde >is middling profitable on its small number of routes. Only after the immense development cost was written off. It's been making a tidy little profit for the last couple of years. >Why do you expect >a "space-plane", used in the same manner as the Concorde, to be a better >/ more_lucrative venture? Er, I may be confused, here (and I often am), but my understanding is that the National Aerospace Plane is intended to be a two-man hypersonic transport, with marginal payload. Right? Or are you referring to the proposed Boeing/ Lockheed/McDonnell-Douglas SST? What you're *describing* sounds suspiciously like HOTOL. >If there isn't a Concorde route to <your_choice_ >of_destination> today, why not? Wouldn't the answers apply to the same >questions asked re: the NASP? Not really. Concorde is restricted due to where it can fly: the routes it makes money on are over-water--most countries do not care for supersonic overflights. A space-plane could likely get away with flying over inhabited areas, without the penalty of a discernable sonic boom. Then again, if we're really talking about the SST, the advantage in that--all along--has been that an American SST would be much larger than Concorde (which is a really puny little airplane, little larger than a Caravelle), in- corporate new technologies, and learn from all the mistakes of Concorde. Moreover, a major motivator is the incredible boom in Pacific Rim traffic over the past ten years--which is projected to outstrip our capability of servicing it within a few years. >If they "see the potential" and it's so sure-fire golden, why then they'll >either a) build it, or b) keep their near-sighted eyes on next month's >bottom line and let the [ Japanese | French | Russians | other ambitious >nation ] build it. I'm not convinced the role of Washington should be to >chivvy said aerospace companies into taking a long-term view by lavishing >taxpayer money on them. At least, not for this program. Personally, I'd rather see taxpayer money wasted on the NASP or SST than the Shuttle. (just thought I'd throw that in to piss off a lot of people :-)). >budget on more Galileos and Voyagers and Vikings and Magellans, and the other >half on pushing ("paying for") excellent ("better" isn't good enough with >things in their current state) science & mathematics programs in our schools. Wasting more money on education won't help things. First we've got to fire the current crop of administrators and teachers--and nobody's suggested that; all we hear are proposals to deify the worthless slobs. In my experience, 3/4 of my teachers were marginal, and perhaps 1 in 10 should never be permitted around children. This ignores the basic problems of curriculum (and keep in mind that I went to good schools!). A number of states have, in fact, increased the funds allocated to education. But all they've accomplished has been to increase the size of the "educationist" bureaucracy, and lowered the quality of education (by most independent standards).