"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
l-september.org...

In article ,
says...

If Southwest can get an extra flight out of a 737 a day, they don't look
at
the total cost of the 737, just the incremental costs of the additional
fuel, crew costs, ramp costs, etc.

Except the shuttle was never run like a 737. Each mission was special
and had scores of engineers working on payload integration, astronaut
training, and etc. Plus there was always the addition of experiments in
the crew cabin, hitch-hiker payloads in the bay, EVAs (to test new tools
and techniques), and etc. Imagine the cost of an airline flight if a
737 crew had to test some new piece of hardware on each and every flight
that required days of training with the hardware being tested.

Ayup, all symptoms in my mind of one of the huge problems with the shuttle.
And you touch upon a related one below.


The flip side to this problem was that NASA always had far too many
astronauts for the size of the shuttle fleet and the number of missions
it flew each year. When an astronaut doesn't fly even once a year for
the length of their career, something is horribly wrong with the way the
program is being run. Again, imagine the costs if a 737 crew only flew
once a month instead of several times a week.

Even if you just flew once or twice a year, things would have improved.

Imagine if NASA had basically dedicated one life science flight every 6
months, i.e. basically reflying the same Spacelab, but with the experiments
swapped out.

Same say for an Earth sciences flight. Flight crew re-training is minimal
and the payload specialists only have to train for their experiments.

(I believe Henry Spencer was a big proponent of this and I believe at least
one commission suggested exactly this.)

And I think it's an important point. For a couple of reasons:
It shows how badly the government managed the program. Congress was very
willing to fund the shuttle at high costs, but rarely provide any extra
money for extra flights that could have been flown (though one can argue
it's a chicken/egg problem. No more flights because no more payloads, no
more payloads because Congress wasn't willing to fund them.)

True, but NASA was part of that problem. NASA rarely flew a mission
that wasn't packed to the gills with as many "extras" as they could
squeeze in. You can claim that cost may not be part of the "incremental
cost" of a shuttle flight, but Congress had to appropriate those funds
so NASA could pay for all those "extras" and when you added it all up
and asked Congress for the grand total, they never wanted to fund it
all.


I think it was sort of a chicken and egg problem. You have as few flights,
you load up as much as you can, so costs go up, so you can't afford more
flights, etc.


Ultimately, this goes to Musk's (and others) business plan: You have
to fly
often. (of course Musk also avoided the mistake of the shuttle program
and
optimized for costs from day one. Congress didn't. They spent less
upfront, made bigger leaps and then hoped the cost savings would come.)

Concluding my point was the shuttle is a lesson in both directions:
1) Certain things NOT to do.
Don't make large technological leaps (SRBs, SSMS, tiles)
Don't skimp upfront (SRBs vs LFBBs)

The two problems went hand in hand. The large technological leaps
required a very large investment. So when the inevitable happened
(budget and schedule didn't match the funds and time available),
compromises were made to the design resulting in what you call skimping
up front. The sorts of compromises made had a large impact on fixed
costs.

Agreed 100%


So the bigger of the two sins was the collection of large technological
leaps required. NASA repeated this horrific mistake when it picked the
winning X-33 contract (despite the success of the VTVL DC-X which
preceded it). I'm quite happy that SpaceX is following in the footsteps
of the DC-X and not the X-33.


Yeah. I think the shuttle was a somewhat honest, though horribly naïve
attempt to fly cheaply (even if it was obvious it would never be as cheap as
some were claiming).

X-33 was very obviously a jobs program. SLS even more so.

Like I say, I fully expect Falcon 9Heavy to fly far more flights and loft
far more payload than SLS ever will. And at a fraction of a price.


Jeff

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net