Nonetheless, this contract _does_ represent a subsidy to the commercial production line of whatever company wins it. Airbus is already threat to be reconned with, half through their achievements and half through our mistakes. Do we really want to help them along to greater achievements?

Also, this is not exactly a two-way street. As I recall, an American company would have won the contract to build the engines for their military freighter, but the job was given to a European “champion.” That freighter, if it ever gets off the ground, will be a direct competitor to Lockheed. The fact that engine has caused no end of grief is no consoluation to the Americans who may have lost their jobs, or not gained jobs, because of that decision. In fact, maybe we should make this sale conditional on the Europeans cancelling that contract and giving it to the better bidder. . . .

— Donald

Huh? How is that happening? Because of the tanker decision? Five years ago everybody was pulling out their hair because Airbus was building the largest commercial airliner in the world and Boeing was in disarray. Then Airbus failed to find many customers for the A380 and Boeing unveiled the 787 and started taking orders like they were Starbucks. Until last year, the news out of Airbus was terrible (A380 delays, an inability to come up with a reasonable competitor to the 787) and the news out of Boeing was great (huge backlogs). Then Boeing ran into delivery problems on the 787, but they will solve these and they will still sell a lot of these planes.

Now Boeing produced a lousy proposal for the tanker (maybe some leftover arrogance from when they tried to _buy_ the contract illegally?) and you’re predicting doom?

This is competition. This is what it looks like. When Boeing gets lazy and arrogant (tanker) Airbus wins the contract. When Airbus gets stupid and incompetent (A380, A350) Boeing kicks their butts.

We also used the Space Station project to pay other countries to learn how to build spaceworthy modules, and guess who is building much of the new infrastructure, e.g., the modules used by OSC’s COTS proposal? Boeing has used the 787 to teach everyone else how to build large composite aerospace structures; the Air Force is behaving no differently. Is it too much to ask that we allow ourselves to remain competitive in at least one industry?

If this continues, who will be left to pay the taxes that fund much of spaceflight, human and automated alike? Who will pay for Grandma’s retirement?

Sorry, rant over.

— Donald

Not only is bigger not necessarily better, but wise engineers recognize that sometimes better is the enemy of good enough.

-MM

Ah.

I see.

It’s a religious belief.

Ares 5 will allow us to build a spacecraft to send people to Mars.

Ares V is neither necessary, or sufficient to send people to Mars.

Because the US should be number 1 in space, and launch weight is part of that. Ares 5 will allow us to build a spacecraft to send people to Mars.

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