So in the end, did P&W win your opinion?
Anthony J. Cesaroni
President/CEO
Cesaroni Technology/Cesaroni Aerospace
http://www.cesaronitech.com/
(941) 360-3100 x101 Sarasota
(905) 887-2370 x222 Toronto
It wasn't just a company demonstrator -- for a while it was a funded
development effort as part of a USAF hypersonic-spyplane project (a Mach
20 boost-glide vehicle air-launched from a B-52). Most of the major
subassemblies had been developed and tested, but it wasn't quite a complete
engine yet -- no LOX pump -- when the spyplane project lost funding, possibly
because it lost an internal competition against MOL.
(Dick Mulready's book comments that one downside of working for the spook shops
was that sometimes you would never know why a project had suddenly closed down.)
One condition of entering the SSME competition was that NASA got unlimited use
of all your technology, *whether or not you won*. And P&W didn't realize that
the competition was a sham with a pre-chosen winner. When they figured out
that they'd never had a chance of winning, and all the high-pressure-engine
technology they'd sweated to develop was about to be handed to Rocketdyne to
build the SSME, they sued NASA (!). To dodge the lawsuit, NASA had to claim
that the P&W technology was of no value... and so they couldn't touch it
thereafter, and Rocketdyne had to do its own sweating.
Henry