On 2012 Jun 6, at 8:22 AM, William Donzelli wrote:
Here's a
little hindsight thought experiment: if the SAGE hardware
had been
reimplemented in solid-state in, say, the late 60s, would it have
been more
cost-effective than running and maintaining the tube version for the
remaining 15 or so years of the system's life?
"Cost effective" would never have been an issue. Running an AN/FSQ-7,
as expensive as it sounds, is peanuts compared to just keeping one
F-102 aircraft fed and maintained.
No, not to the bureaucracy (I was getting at that in my first message).
Going from the pages Mike ref'd, I didn't realise so many of the
sites had been decommissioned so early and only a lesser portion hung
on to the 80s.