"Dr. O" dr.o@xxxxx wrote in message
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"Dholmes" wrote in message
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"TKalbfus" wrote in message
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Most of these I actually find kind of worrisome.
A robotic shuttle could eat massive amounts of money and free up very
little
for a moon program.


Why is that? Its only electronics. The Shuttle is already highly
automated, it
launches by itself and it could land by itself.

The only thing you get is a little more mass and now need to risk men.

You need to check the tiles, the engines, and everything else the
shuttle
requires.
There is no savings in manpower or other equipment.
You still need to do basically everything you do for a manned shuttle.

So it still costs $3 billion dollars plus.
Which means there is no money freed up to go to the Moon.

No, you're mistaken. The variant chosen will be a cargo module on top of
the
current Shuttle tank, probably with engines in it, a Shuttle-C type
system,
but not reusable. That will markedly reduce costs as most of the money
spend
by the Shuttle program is making sure the manned vehicle doesn't blow up.

One would hope that is the way they go.
That would allow savings and heavy launch mass.
A win win situation.