Space Shuttle costs.

"Rusty" wrote:

$ 33-billion dollars was spent building and developing the Shuttle. If
people believe that wasn't enought money, then how much would have been
enough?

A fascinating question - as it's often postulated that the Shuttle was
(is) a still born ******* because Congress/NASA decided to 'cheap out'
on development.

Postulated for discussion: Let's say that $mega-billions were spent,
(where $mega 33), what happens? Could we really have developed a
system with a 30 day turnaround capability on our first try?
Considering that $mega were (in this scenario) spent, could flights
still have been cheap enough to attract enough flights to make the
Shuttle 'economical'?

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Derek Lyons wrote:
"Rusty" wrote:

$ 33-billion dollars was spent building and developing the Shuttle. If
people believe that wasn't enought money, then how much would have been
enough?

A fascinating question - as it's often postulated that the Shuttle was
(is) a still born ******* because Congress/NASA decided to 'cheap out'
on development.

Postulated for discussion: Let's say that $mega-billions were spent,
(where $mega 33), what happens? Could we really have developed a
system with a 30 day turnaround capability on our first try?
Considering that $mega were (in this scenario) spent, could flights
still have been cheap enough to attract enough flights to make the
Shuttle 'economical'?

D.
--
IMO, almest every aspect of the Shuttle program was flawed from
Day 1. IIRC, the Economic (ECON) model was flawed in that it did not
allow for the possibility that reusability--and incremental flight
testing--could actually reduce development costs. Rather, this
flawed economics model treated reusability as an add-on cost. IMO,
the far superior, fully reusable, Phase A designs could have been
developed for the same or less money spent on the partially reusable
design that became the Space Shuttle.

And of course, SRBs and expendable tank precluded getting anywhere
close to the cost goals as stated. Reusing the SRBs saved no money,
since they cost about twice as much as equivalent expendables, and only
saved half of the cost per flight. For anyone who knew anything about
the subject, the promises made on behalf of the then proposed Shuttle
were either incompetent or fraudulent--take your pick. When Rockwell
won Shuttle, I quit Rockwell.

Best regards,
Len (Cormier)
PanAero, Inc.
(change x to len)
http://www.tour2space.com

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 17:55:58 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

"Rusty" wrote:

$ 33-billion dollars was spent building and developing the Shuttle. If
people believe that wasn't enought money, then how much would have been
enough?

A fascinating question - as it's often postulated that the Shuttle was
(is) a still born ******* because Congress/NASA decided to 'cheap out'
on development.

Postulated for discussion: Let's say that $mega-billions were spent,
(where $mega 33), what happens? Could we really have developed a
system with a 30 day turnaround capability on our first try?
Considering that $mega were (in this scenario) spent, could flights
still have been cheap enough to attract enough flights to make the
Shuttle 'economical'?

Probably not, unless you also delete the reqiurements for a thousand
miles cross range, and sixty-five thousand pounds.

"Len" wrote:

IMO, the far superior, fully reusable, Phase A designs could
have been developed for the same or less money spent on the
partially reusable design that became the Space Shuttle.

Of course designs even more ambitious than the Shuttle would
have been cheaper. How could anyone think different?

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 17:55:58 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

Postulated for discussion: Let's say that $mega-billions were spent,
(where $mega 33), what happens? Could we really have developed a
system with a 30 day turnaround capability on our first try?
Considering that $mega were (in this scenario) spent, could flights
still have been cheap enough to attract enough flights to make the
Shuttle 'economical'?

Probably not, unless you also delete the reqiurements for a thousand
miles cross range, and sixty-five thousand pounds.

Which then raises the additional question - what's a reasonable cargo
requirement for a fully reuseable craft?

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Derek Lyons wrote:

Which then raises the additional question - what's a reasonable cargo
requirement for a fully reuseable craft?



Around 1/2 to 1/3 of what the Shuttle carries? I doubt you could do much
better than that with a reasonable sized vehicle.
I imagine it depends on what its main mission is going to be- does it
carry a crew and light cargo to something in orbit, or a commercial or
scientific satellite, or a military satellite?
Cargo bay volume becomes critical in the case of the last two also, as a
lot of military satellites tend to be large in size, as do some
commercial ones.

Pat

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message

Which then raises the additional question - what's a
reasonable cargo requirement for a fully reuseable
craft?

500-1000 kg :-)

While optimal maximum upward payload size might be in the 5000-10000 kg
range, this should only require a downward drymass capability of
500-1000 kg. This is perhaps what the reusable vehicle should be sized
for, not the upward payload.

A 500-1000 kg payload reusable vehicle offers much higher flight rates
and probably much lower development costs. It will necessarily have a
500-1000 kg downmass capability anyway which would otherwise be mostly
unutilised.

I am suggesting a 500-1000 kg reusable vehicle and a low cost
expendable, (but not expended), launch vehicle in the 5000-10000 kg
payload range designed to be quickly disassembled in orbit and returned
to Earth via the smaller vehicle. Orbital assembly should similarly
infer orbital unassembly, this could be quick. Tanks would likely
remain in orbit and perhaps be used for a station, etcetera, though
recoverable inflatable tank designs might be possible.

Much larger launch vehicles should also be possible by using many of the
standard modular components in parallel. Vehicles could be scaled up
without additional reusability development work.

Pete.

Pete Lynn wrote:


A 500-1000 kg payload reusable vehicle offers much higher flight rates
and probably much lower development costs. It will necessarily have a
500-1000 kg downmass capability anyway which would otherwise be mostly
unutilised.



Oh yeah, you will get a _lot_ of flights with a vehicle that is only
capable of carrying a metric ton of payload at a time. :-)

Much larger launch vehicles should also be possible by using many of the
standard modular components in parallel. Vehicles could be scaled up
without additional reusability development work.



If you were going to design something that is reusable, something like
this with a recoverable upper stage would probably be a pretty good
point to start: http://www.buran.ru/htm/strbaik.htm
That's one of the cleverest rocket booster designs I've seen in some time.

Pat

Derek Lyons wrote:
"Len" wrote:

IMO, the far superior, fully reusable, Phase A designs could
have been developed for the same or less money spent on the
partially reusable design that became the Space Shuttle.

Of course designs even more ambitious than the Shuttle would
have been cheaper. How could anyone think different?

D.
--

Of course, I guess you have never really considered the value
of incremental flight testing versus the incredibly expensive,
hand-wringing test programs typical of expendable launch systems.
Proven aircraft-like incremental test programs are not, IMO,
anywhere near as "ambitious"--or certainly costly--than what
has been going on in five decades of expendable launch vehicle
development.

Production aircraft programs are expensive, because a lot is
riding on a large production run. However, a few operational
prototypes do not necessarily require the engineering and
test costs typical of a production aircraft. The original U-2
and X-15 program involved only about 40 or fifty engineers.
The A-11/A-12 involved only about 200 engineers, Follow-on
TR and SR-71 programs involved a lot more engineers--but this
is because of program organization wherein the "Skunk Works"
philosophy got lost. "How" a program is managed is likely
to be of overwhelming importance as far as costs are concerned.

Best regards,
Len (Cormier)
PanAero, Inc.
(change x to len)
http://www.tour2space.com

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 02:40:26 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

(Rand Simberg) wrote:

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 17:55:58 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

Postulated for discussion: Let's say that $mega-billions were spent,
(where $mega 33), what happens? Could we really have developed a
system with a 30 day turnaround capability on our first try?
Considering that $mega were (in this scenario) spent, could flights
still have been cheap enough to attract enough flights to make the
Shuttle 'economical'?

Probably not, unless you also delete the reqiurements for a thousand
miles cross range, and sixty-five thousand pounds.

Which then raises the additional question - what's a reasonable cargo
requirement for a fully reuseable craft?

My guess is about 10 Klb to LEO, with no requirement that it be a
space station.