Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!skipper!shafer From: shafer@elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) Newsgroups: sci.space Subject: Re: Don't Mess with NASA (afterburners) Message-ID: Date: 24 Jul 89 16:24:55 GMT References: <8907201027.AA07833@osteocyber.ortho.hmc.psu.edu> <1989Jul20.184051.19979@utzoo.uucp> <1989Jul21.193401.19303@utzoo.uucp> Sender: news@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov Organization: NASA Dryden, Edwards, Cal. Lines: 30 In-reply-to: henry@utzoo.uucp's message of 21 Jul 89 19:34:01 GMT In article <1989Jul21.193401.19303@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes, referring to small, high-performance jet aircraft: >If a private market in such things were allowed, we wouldn't have to buy >things designed by the government. Then buy a BD-5J. There isn't one cent of government money in BD-5Js. Since a private market for high-performance, jet "fighter" aircraft does exist, why is this market _so_ small? Why is there essentially only one entry in the market? Maybe the market has decided that this isn't an appropriate place to allocate resources? I am, of course, assuming that the market is rational. Since this is apparently also your assumption, I don't think we're very far off. I think that, to some extent, the same argument applies to the market and private space efforts. I'd like to point out that I'm part of the aeronautical side of NASA and not connected to the space portion except as a tax payer and interested bystander. But we have a joke that the first A in NASA is 6 point and the S is 36 point. -- M F Shafer shafer@elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov NASA Ames Research Center arpa!elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer Dryden Flight Research Facility Of course I don't speak for NASA