Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Reliability of Ballistic Missiles
Message-ID: <6944@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 27 May 89 03:17:26 GMT
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>>And the soviet missles are donbe by the same crowd that can't keep cars
>>going, right?
>
>Um, wrong...they're done by the same crowd that has a launch a month
>or so and keeps men in orbit for a year...

Talk about underestimates...  It's not a launch a month, it's typically
two a *week*.  Much of that experience is probably not directly relevant
to operational missiles, since the major Soviet space booster is long
obsolete as an ICBM, but the general technology is pretty thoroughly
shaken down all right.

More generally, one should bear in mind that Soviet consumer goods and
Soviet military/space hardware are very different stories.  The split
between those two parts of their industry is much more radical than in
the West.  The military/space industry suffers from similar limitations
on technological sophistication, which is why it never builds anything
fancier than necessary, but when it matters they do it right.  The Energia
assembly building at Baikonur looks a bit shabby from the outside, but on
the inside it's clean, and the hardware that rolls out of it works.

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu