[OT] shuttle , A380... was Re: Salute to the Royal Navy


"Martin Smith" <beeties@xxxxxxxxx> a écrit dans le message de
news:aubef1h5n388dvfrqv42pmdp2m76r90lp1@xxxxxxxxxx
>
> Some of these engineering feats just strike me as being, I don't know,
> not silly, dumb, I guess. Like the recent private flight into "space"
> that won its team $10 million aftern they spent about twice that
> building the ship. And what is the goal? To put a hotel in orbit and
> let rich tourists spend the night there. And this huge, Airbus A380.
> Why should I want to fly on an airplane that has a McDonalds on it?
> Tha's another tragedy in the making.
>
> The space shuttle program and the space station feel like a waste of
> time to me.

Really, you can't compare the space shuttle and the A380.

The space shuttle is (like the Concorde) a technological dead end.

It doesn't make sense to use the same vessel to send people and commercial
loads in space. It may not even be wise to send people in orbit: what can
they do that machines cannot do? You end up using most of your efforts and
money to save / feed / observe / take back to Earth the people, and not
getting the job done (sending a few tons in orbit). This the reason the
european manned shuttle program (Hermes) was stopped. BTW, the same can
certainly be said about lots of submarines. What a symbol that the unmanned
Scorpio 45 had to save the men in the Priz...

The shuttle concept is a basic design failure, and you just have to start
from scratch again, a few decades later, with better concepts. Too bad we
lost so much time.

On the other hand, there is surely a commercial interest in having people
travelling in the air burning as few oil per passenger.km as possible, and
to avoid airport congestion by using bigger aircrafts. The aim of the A380
is not to have McDonalds in them. And introducing a bit of competition in
the mega-jet area, after a few decades of 747 monopoly, cannot do harm. The
business case for the A380 seems much better than for the shuttle.
Especially if the "spoke and hub" model of big airlines continues to succeed
(as opposed to the point-to-point model of some regional players). Time will
tell...

-- Olivier






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