Xref: utzoo sci.space:12796 sci.space.shuttle:3430 Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: space news from June 26 AW&ST Message-ID: <1989Aug4.031940.19962@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <1989Jul24.033656.20927@utzoo.uucp> Date: Fri, 4 Aug 89 03:19:40 GMT In article bruno@inmic.se (Bruno Poterie) writes: >> Ariane 5 development program will probably slip several months... > >Which firm was building those mixers? I bet that it is a private company. >If confirmed, this is one more reason to doubt about the validity of the "private" >approach. If Arianespace had had a contract with the NASA or with another >government or official agency, it would have been respected... Ha ha. Ho ho. Hee hee. Remember Ulysses, nee *International* Solar Polar Mission? The US government can and does renege on both promises and out- and-out contracts. Ask most anybody who had a commercial launch booked on the Shuttle at the beginning of 1986. Those people didn't even get their deposits back, as I recall. Some of them seriously thought about suing the US government. I don't recall the details, but the mixers were undoubtedly being built by private industry. However, the diversion was the government's idea. -- 1961-1969: 8 years of Apollo. | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 1969-1989: 20 years of nothing.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu