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To: Valueman who wrote (31160)	5/27/1999 11:04:00 AM
From: DaveMG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

And how do we stop underpaid Russian scientists from selling their knowhow to the highest bidder,let alone a few of of their thousands of warheads?

To: Valueman who wrote (31160)	5/27/1999 11:34:00 AM
From: mauser96	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

The Soyuz rocket is big, reliable , but of very limited military use. It takes a long time to fuel and launch and is highly visible to satellite snooping. It might be used in a first strike (assuming that the target nation can't detect the fueling process and increased pad activity) but is useless as a retaliatory weapon. If the Chinese have one, they may want the technology more for the lucrative satellite launching business. Since the US is a high labor cost country, and most of our launching vehicles are high tech and expensive, a cheap reliable rocket using low cost labor will be able to undercut US prices. From the standpoint of companies like GSTRF it doesn't matter who launches the satellite. All that counts is the cost and success rate.

To: Valueman who wrote (31160)	5/27/1999 11:44:00 AM
From: Jeff Vayda	Respond to of 152472

Vman: I have to take exception to your general characterization of the US rocket industry. A few things to quickly point out: 1) With respect to Soyuz launch success rates: The Russians are not the most forthcoming bunch. Years of rewriting history bring any numbers before independent confirmations into question. Early in their space program, launches were not even reported until after they were a success. Soyuz rates today are very good but that brings out the second point, 2) Russian launchers are hardly pushing the envelope. Take a look at a current vehicle and one from years ago, you would be hard pressed to identify a difference. The current US ICBM fleet is by no means 'state of the art' or 'pushing the envelope'. Like the Soyuz launchers these systems have been around for years and are constantly being tested and verified. No worries there, they would support if called upon. In civilian non-manned space, reduction in costs can only come from pushing the envelope and testing new configurations. In a perfect world there would be enough money and time to completely test a new design before making it operational. But the world is not perfect. There are many factors which go into the final 'pounds to orbit' costs and not all of them are financial. In the process of developing a new launch system, many things are tried and modified. As I have said before, it takes time to get past all the possible combinations that may arrange themselves to bite you. A good example is the latest IUS failure. Initial reports have identified the problem as 10 years old. It just happened to take that long for all the uncertainties to line up such that this set finally caused a failure. The earlier failure of the Delta III to issue the engine start command was traced to the health check software overwriting the fire command during the final seconds of count. Just one of the things you dont find out until you launch the thing. I have confidence in the overall ability of the US launch industry. We will return to 'historic' levels of launch success. Jeff Vayda