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From: johnsonr@boulder.Colorado.EDU (JOHNSON RICHARD J)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Fourth Shuttle?
Summary: Commercial or Military Industrial Complex?
Message-ID: <15018@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 19 Dec 89 05:30:05 GMT
References: <2393@ttardis.UUCP>
Sender: news@boulder.Colorado.EDU
Reply-To: johnsonr@spot.colorado.edu (Richard Johnson)
Organization: Center for Space Construction, University of Colorado, Boulder
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rlw@ttardis.UUCP (Ron Wilson) writes:
)Sad to say: It might cost us less to have the Japanise build the shuttles
)for us - unlike US companies, cost and time overruns are the exception
)rather than the rule for Japanise companies.

Which Japanese companies have bid for contracts under the US government's
military industrial complex system?  The system where if companies don't
follow the lead of their federal agency customers and low-ball the cost
estimates their project doesn't make it at all.  What amazes me is that
some companies still manage to give the agencies a decent product that
works as advertised and was actually developed on shedule and under cost.
That almost never happens on the big technical welfare projects, but has
happened often enough to notice on smaller deals.

I suspect that if Japanese companies tried to compete in the US federal
procurement and tech development system that they'd either come out much
the same as the best US companies, or not win contracts.

Are cost and time overruns the exception rather than the rule for US
*commercial* development projects?  Are they really the exception for
Japanese companies?  If there is a difference, can it be explained by
something as simple as Japanese schedules having more slack than the
corresponding US schedules?  I honestly don't know the answers here.

Perhaps if a Japanese company had built the shuttle, they would have begun
with a more realistic funding peak and not increased the overall
development and operations costs of the system by trimming much smaller
amounts of moolah up front.  They wouldn't have won the contract.  Perhaps
if the shuttle could have been funded as a commercial venture ;-) ;-)
a US company would have been able to do the same.

It's foolish to compare Japanese commercial performance to US military
industrial complex performance.  The two games are played by different
rules.  A "winning" strategy in one isn't necessarily a winning plan in
the other.

| Richard Johnson                           johnsonr@spot.colorado.edu |
|    CSC doesn't necessarily share my opinions, but is welcome to.     |
|  Power Tower...Dual Keel...Phase One...Allison/bertha/Colleen...?... |
|   Space Station Freedom is Dead.  Long Live Space Station Freedom!   |