On 2/8/2018 8:30 AM, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Wed, 7 Feb 2018, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
Henry Spencer wrote:
It will take time for a substantial heavylift market to develop.
Time, or a high-volume government customer. Say, a serious human deep-space exploration program that actually wanted to accomplish something interesting for the ~$4G/year that's the likely max politically-practical funding.
Even that will take time to materialize to the point that it's actually spending money on launches. It has the strength that because it's a command economy, it can (in principle) make fast decisions, so at least you know the business is coming; it has the compensating weakness that it can also change its mind quickly later.