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From: jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Josh Hopkins)
Subject: Re: Revival of San Marco? (was Re: Commercial Space News #22)
Date: Sat, 1 May 1993 04:02:52 GMT
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higgins@fnalf.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:

>In article <324417a1@ofa123.fidonet.org>, Wales.Larrison@ofa123.fidonet.org writes:
>> COMMERCIAL SPACE NEWS/SPACE TECHNOLOGY INVESTOR NUMBER 22
>[...]
>>    Other commercial launch site ventures -- including those at 
>> Woomera, Poker Flat, Cape York, White Sands, Alabama Off-Shore 
>> Platform, Hawaii, and Vandenberg have to also be judged against 
>> these criteria.  In my opinion, some of these ventures are flying 
>> on hope and speculation, and not on sound financial grounds.]

>This reminds me... my fuzzy brain recalls that somebody was thinking
>of reviving the San Marco launch platform off the coast of Kenya,
>where the Copernicus satellite was launched around 1972.  Is this
>true, or am I imagining it?  Possibly it's connected with one of the
>Italian programs to revive the Scout in a new version.

>That old platform must be getting pretty rusty, and there ain't a lot
>of infrastructure to go with it...

My information shows that the last San Marco launch was 1988.  There seem to 
have been a total of seven before that.  I seem to recall that someone, either
ASI or the University of Rome (?) includes money in their annual budget for
maintainance of the platforms (there are actually two).

The Italians have been spending money to develop an advanced Scout.  However,
recent events in the Italian space program, and the Italian government overall
make me skeptical that this will get off the ground in the near future.
-- 
Josh Hopkins                                          jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
		    "Find a way or make one."
	             -attributed to Hannibal
