Xref: utzoo sci.aeronautics:67 sci.space:14236 sci.space.shuttle:3690 Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!oliveb!mipos3!omepd!omews10.intel.com!larry From: larry@omews10.intel.com (Larry Smith) Newsgroups: sci.aeronautics,sci.space,sci.space.shuttle Subject: Space Station Strangles NASP Message-ID: <4983@omepd.UUCP> Date: 27 Sep 89 18:50:17 GMT Sender: news@omepd.UUCP Reply-To: larry@omews10.intel.com (Larry Smith) Distribution: usa Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon Lines: 40 Quoting SPACE NEWS Sept. 18, 1989 (the preview issue of the new publication of DEFENSE WEEK to appear in Jan. 90), "The 1990 budget account for NASA's space station was increased substantially by a key Senate committee last week, but all funding for the national aerospace plane was deleted from the agency's spending plan". This is absurd. Just like the Ford Model-T enabled people for the first time to AFFORDABLY travel hundreds of miles from their homes, and the DC-3 to AFFORDABLY travel thousands of miles, the national aerospace plane derived vehicle (NASPDV) holds the promise of AFFORDABLE transportation to low earth orbit. If you really want the federal and commercial space development business to bloom, provide an AFFORDABLE way to get people and light cargoes to LEO (NASPDV), and reduce by 10X the cost of heavy payloads (ALS or Jarvis). Don't provide a great facility (space station) with a very expensive, and therefore ultimately unaffordable, way to get there (Shuttle). Put another way, if you had to travel from LA to NY to help a client with a technical problem, or to investigate new techniques/markets, would you want to go through the overhead and delay of getting yourself on a system like the space shuttle, or would you like to buy a ticket with a credit card, and go to your local large airport and catch a ride ? True, NASP/X-30 has technical hurdles, but these hurdles are not impossible ones. The past several years of technology development have proven that. Also, for the people on the net that say that U.S. aerospace companies never contribute their own funds to development any more, the NASP/X-30 technology development effort to date, has been funded at the 50% level by the 5 U.S. aerospace firms that are taking part, and a vehicle is not even being built! . Surely, they wouldn't do this if they didn't see the potential, as mentioned above. Quoting them, in 1 year they will be at the point where they will be ready to develop hardware! They have said that any further delay is excessive! X-30 is NOT a 21st century concept. It IS a mid 1990's concept !! Look at it yet another way ... X-30 would cost the same as about 4 B-2s. Which gives a better return ? The orbital X-15 program was killed by Apollo. Is NASP/X-30 about to be killed by the space station? Larry Smith