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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: I want that Billion
Message-ID: <C663u5.IKC@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1993 00:25:15 GMT
References: <1rh4rqINNi7o@mojo.eng.umd.edu> <C63vvG.4J9@zoo.toronto.edu> <1rkb56INN9hs@mojo.eng.umd.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 27

In article <1rkb56INN9hs@mojo.eng.umd.edu> sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu writes:
>>What's more, if you buy Titans, the prize money is your entire return on
>>investment.  If you develop a new launch system, it has other uses, and
>>the prize is just the icing on the cake.
>
>Unless you're Martin Marietta, since (as I recall) they bought out the GD
>line of aerospace products. 

I think you've got an off-by-one error in your memory. :-)  MM bought the
satellite-building side of GE.  E, not D.  MM and GD are still competitors.

>If MM/GD does it as an in-house project, their costs would look much better
>than buying at "list price."

Better, yes, but we're not talking order of magnitude.  (Especially if you
want to use Titan IV, which belongs to the USAF, not MM.)

>... C'mon. Allen is telling us how cheap we can get improved this
>or that... 

Sure, you can get a heavylift launcher fairly cheap if you do it privately
rather than as a gummint project.  But we're still talking about something
that will cost nine digits per launch, unless you can guarantee a large
market to justify volume production.
-- 
SVR4 resembles a high-speed collision   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
between SVR3 and SunOS.    - Dick Dunn  |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
