Thread: Moral Equivalent Of A Space Program
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Old February 16th 06, 09:50 AM posted to sci.space.moderated,sci.space.policy
Fred J. McCall
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Default Moral Equivalent Of A Space Program
h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

:On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 04:15:41 -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:
:
:::No, I told you. Add up the development costs, and the ongoing
::perational 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.
::
::Except you cheat the numbers because you don't include the development
::and infrastructure development costs of the Shuttle in *that* number.
::
::That is not *cheating*. I told you, they're sunk. We have no choice
:ver whether or not to spend them, because that expenditure has
::already taken place, and we don't have a time machine. When you're
::making a decision to make a future investment in something that's
:stensibly to save you money, you *have to* include the investment as
:art of the total costs.
:
:Note that this is *NOT* the same question as whether it would be
:cheaper to get a pound to orbit than Shuttle. You're now asking if it
:makes free-market economic sense - and you haven't answered that
:question adequately, either.
:
:Either in the free market, or in a government expenditure, an economic
:decision has to be based on future costs, not sunk ones. There's an
:expression for your kind of thinking--"throwing good money after bad."

And there's an expression for yours, as well - "comparing marginal
costs to fully burdened development costs".

In other words, you compare apples to aardvarks. In even simpler
terms, you cheat the numbers.

To answer the original question, you have to compare marginal costs to
marginal costs.

To answer the issue you now bring up above, you have to compare fully
burdened costs to fully burdened costs OVER THE EXPECTED LIFESPAN OF
THE SYSTEM.

You do neither.

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn