OK, now I understand where things stand.
It's always a pleasure to meet another "experienced gambler"
--unless you both happen to be sitting at the same table. :)
Maybe my crew chief was embellishing, maybe not--but he was there,
and the fact that, e.g., supply planes or P3s come in that heavy
is not at all the same thing as operating squadrons of jets that
have similar loads. But OK, you may be right--gee, after all
that development, why wasn't the B variant fielded?
Because it turned out to be a bad idea. There is no intrinsic
shame in that, but there was pork in the process that led
to a "large turning radius". That was my intended point.
I know there are aerospace success stories, and I know how
they sometimes get scotched, too--see the rise and fall of
the DC-X, and NASA's lame "oh, gee, don't know where we
can scrape up money" story. There are none so blind...
By the way, the real aces up my sleeve were aircraft
such as Paraplanes *and* the fact that I said
"'til failure" of either the airframe or the powerplant.
Run an RPV into the ground and your maintenance hours
could be _zero_. :)
Darn, there goes my free Zoche. :)
Anyway: it's down to your believing that we're such a hot
radio item that our first visitors will (/have) come in the first
thing they can bolt together that will make the trip. Correct?
Plus you believe that operating hours for space vehicles
_must_ be roughly equivalent (re: wear) to our experience
with aircraft operating near our turbulent, corrosive little
rockball under the political pressures we both acknowledge
exist here in the good ol' US of A.
Can't prove you're wrong, old son; but you gussy it up like it
was more than a guess. :)
>That we
>succeed in spite of politicians and bureaucrats says volumes about
>engineers.
Amen to that.
MMB
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