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On 2018-02-20 06:34, Jeff Findley wrote:

The shuttle was a magnificent machine, but it was expensive as hell and
held NASA back with its high fixed costs.


Considering how SpaceX is revolutionizing pricing by orders of magnitude
because it can re-use stages, it boggles the mind that the Shuttle
couldn't be competitive.

Shuttle was deeply flawed and used as much former Saturn V
infrastructure as possible (i.e. $$$$). Also, shuttle used SRBs which
had to be stripped down and remanufactured, so they weren't really
reusable. The orbiter, in the early years, had its engines pulled after
each and every flight so they could be torn down and inspected, which
isn't reusable. The OMS pods were removed and had to be reinstalled
routinely as well, which isn't reusable. And finally the external tank
was disposable, which is clearly not reusable.

From a cheap turn-around point of view, where did the shuttle lose? Was
it the cost of turning around SRBs ? new ET for every flights ?
Hypergolics in the orbiter? tiles ? or the SSMEs ?

You've actually hit all of the big hitters that I know of, so "All of
the above".

(if answer is "all" which were substantial?

They were all substantial.

Look, you don't get low operating costs unless you design for them. The
shuttle program aimed to keep development costs low due to a pretty much
arbitrary limit which was set for it (by OMB?). They actually did that.
Development costs were actually pretty close to the limit. But they
sacrificed operating costs when doing so. It seemed like every decision
they made did this.

Also, internally, the (German led) team that developed Saturn V was
pretty much pushed to the side. That led to a completely dysfunctional
organization that didn't operate well. Ares and SLS are clear evidence
that this is still the case today.

Jeff
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