Rand Simberg wrote:
On Sun, 12 Feb 2006 08:37:34 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Fred J.
McCall" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

:::There's no reason to believe that CEV will reduce the cost of manned
:::spaceflight.
::
::When compared to Shuttle, a hideously expensive system?
::
::Yes, even when compared to Shuttle.
:
:Got numbers for cost to orbit?
:
:No, but they can be estimated, as described below.

Well, not so much description, from what I see. Perhaps you have a
different 'below' than I do?

No, I told you. Add up the development costs,

The CEV is also intended as a moonship and marsship and lifeboat. You
can't allocate all the development costs to the LEO ferry role.


and the ongoing
operational costs (including the costs of launching the cargo that is
no longer launched by the manned vehicle, but can be by the Shuttle),
divide by the flight rates, and you get an infrastructure that costs
as much, or more than, the Shuttle. Even ignoring the amortization of
the development costs, the marginal costs of the Shaft + CEV launch
will be at least a couple hundred million, to deliver four crew
instead of seven. Shuttle's marginal cost are about the same, to
deliver a crew of seven, plus fifty thousand pounds of payload.


The CEV is sized to carry up to six, and the shuttle can't carry
anything like fifty thousand pounds of payload to ISS. NASA figures
that it can do the ISS crew rotation and logistics with six or seven
CEV flights.

Marginal costs for the shuttle include failure costs, since the shuttle
has historically suffered an orbiter loss and multiyear standdown every
fifty flights or so. Also, shuttle maintains the standing army to
service a large, complex, finicky tile covered orbiter with wings,
control surfaces, hydraulics, landing gear and maintenance intensive
main engines.

Will McLean