"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...
Agreed because by Bruno's logic, if NASA had commercialized the shuttle
and
only charged the marginal cost, it would have been fairly cheap.
Anything can be cheap when someone else is paying for it.


The space shuttle program did just that, sold commercial launches to
satellite companies for far less than the actual cost. Now that the
program is over we know the true cost ($1.45 billion per launch). NASA
never charged the true cost of a flight to its commercial customers.

On one hand you're correct. On the other, arguably, NASA never fully
commercialized the shuttle.
25 flights, and for of them "test flights" wasn't really enough for them to
get into the commercial business like they might have.
Yes, I know a fair number of the early flights were basically "strictly
commercial' but, I think had NASA gone full-blown "commercial" they might
have done things differently.

For example, they might have actually had more reason to work on things like
turn-around time. A shuttle flying 2x as often suddenly spreads the fixed
cost around a bit.
But, as we both know, that never happened.


Of course, the Challenger disaster put an end to that practice and
actually made it illegal for NASA to sell commercial launches anymore.
That was the start of opening up the commercial markets in the US.
Unfortunately the USAF decided it wanted control and the original EELV
was born, leaving us with ULA. In other words, the USAF "intervention"
for national security reasons prolonged the practice of the US
Government subsidizing the US launch industry, keeping the real costs
high and actually hurting the US launch industry in the long run.

I'll admit, I initially, naively thought the decision to not allow
commercial flights was a mistake. Now looking back, I think it was the right
move.
Of course as you say, the original EELV wasn't much of an improvement.

And heck for a while the Titan IV made the shuttle look good

One hope I have now is that Falcon Heavy flies enough to convince Congress
to put the nail in the coffin for SLS and redirect that money elsewhere.


Jeff

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