Ed Kyle wrote:
Rand Simberg wrote:
On 19 Sep 2005 15:08:09 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
plan?

I think it provides a good roadmap for NASA to follow for
the next how-ever-many years. It is a great improvement
to the space shuttle era NASA framework.

This is a plan that could very well, over time, lead to a
smaller, more focused NASA.

More focused, certainly, but with the increasing budget, and the
predilection to do more in house and less contracting, how is it
smaller?

It is a plan that produces
something useful in the near-term - the CEV and CLV tools
that will replace shuttle and could by themselves, in
concert with commercial launch services and international
space station partners, serve as the framework for a long-
term human space program.

For exactly the same (or more) cost as the Shuttle program.

http://www.transterrestrial.com/arch...29.html#005729

I haven't seen the CEV costs you cite in this article.
I've seen the recent charts put up by nasawatch, but
I don't see how it is possible to sort out development
costs from operating costs in these projections.


You can make a stab at by looking at the costs after specific systems
are supposed to become operational. Note, however, that though the
charts were posted recently, they date back to June, and at least some
of the assumptions are obsolete.

It
still seems likely to me that a Stick-based program
would cost less annually than a Shuttle-based program
over the long term.

The bottom line is that NASA's budget is not projected
to increase much on an annual basis (adjusted for
inflation) even while it develops two new launch
vehicles and two new human crewed spaceflight vehicles
that will be bound for the moon. This sounds better to
me than the status quo that has NASA spending close to
$4 billion per year trying to keep shuttle flying in
low earth orbit only.

- Ed Kyle

Over $4 billion a year now.

Will McLean