"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
...

"Greg \(Strider\) Moore" wrote:

"JF Mezei" wrote in message ...

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.

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 ?

(if answer is "all" which were substantial?

Jeff gives a pretty decent answer. It really comes down to:
"It wasn't designed to be cheap to fly. It was designed to be cheap
build."

For example, boosters that were liquid fueled and used perhaps the proven
F-1 and could be refurbished at the Cape.
(and probably would have prevented Challenger).


It probably would have prevented Columbia, too, since the foam
shedding that was the root cause of that accident was primarily
because of the high vibration solid boosters.


I'd given that some thought, but didn't want to add that as it's a little
harder to draw a direct correlation.
But that said, I suspect you're right.




--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
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