CBO Report: Alternatives for Future U.S. Space-Launch Capabilities

Spaceref.com has a nice article on alternatives
based on CBO report.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=22323

full report at
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index...uence=0&from=7

Cheapest slow approach: Delta IV derived.

Cheapest fast approach: Atlas V derived.

The monster: 146 ton RS-68 super rocket.

Douglas Holmes wrote:
Spaceref.com has a nice article on alternatives
based on CBO report.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=22323

full report at
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index...uence=0&from=7

Cheapest slow approach: Delta IV derived.

Cheapest fast approach: Atlas V derived.

The monster: 146 ton RS-68 super rocket.

Finally a government entity publishes the truth. Delta IV Heavy costs
$350 million per launch, an astonishing jump from the originally
claimed $150 million.

- Ed Kyle

Ed,

Finally a government entity publishes the truth. Delta IV Heavy costs
$350 million per launch, an astonishing jump from the originally
claimed $150 million.

You keep reading a lot more into this than you ought to. Sure,
*price* has gone up to $350M. If you're only flying one or two
of them per year instead of the 6-9 or more a year that they
originally planned. The actual marginal cost of a Delta IV flight
is probably within 10% of the original cost they were figuring on
back when they first started flying. The problem is that when
you have a big program, where you have to keep a certain bare
minimum number of people around continuously regardless of
the number of flights you have, if you end up having very few
flights, you end up having to charge their full salary and overhead
to just those few flights. This whole "its now $350M when it used
to be $150M" discussion says nothing whatsoever about what
that price would be if you ordered a bulk-buy of 5 or 6 of them over
a 1-2 year time frame.

Of course, even $150M is way too much in my book, but it's
important to remember that really low flight rates really screw
with prices because most of the cost ends up not being the
marginal cost, but the fixed yearly cost of the program.

~Jon

Jonathan Goff wrote:
Ed,

Finally a government entity publishes the truth. Delta IV Heavy costs
$350 million per launch, an astonishing jump from the originally
claimed $150 million.

You keep reading a lot more into this than you ought to. Sure,
*price* has gone up to $350M. If you're only flying one or two
of them per year instead of the 6-9 or more a year that they
originally planned.

But that's the point. They are not flying 6-9 Delta IV Heavies per
year. They never were going to fly that many per year, and they
never will. The estimates were a mirage.

Boeing should have known better too. All it had to do was look
at the Titan IV record - 2-4 per year, year after year. Then all it
needed to do was think critically for just one minute about the
Teledesic business plan (remember how we were all going to
pay big bucks to connect to the Internet through a network of
800 satellites?), since Teledesic represented the majority of its
hoped-for launch backlog. As hard as it is to believe now, Boeing
claimed in 2001 that it had 60 commercial launch agreements
for Delta IV!

- Ed Kyle

Did anyone notice the side mounted Cargo Booster. Looks like someone is
pushing things back towards Shuttle C config. This would be a great
savings, (No retool of pad and Existing Ground Support, (on at least
one of the pads). If they go this route with Atlas as the CEV booster,
we could make this happen sooner and cheaper. Not to mention that the
work force would not need to be in major upside down turnover.

Good to see that we are getting ready for a possible turn-over in
congress. It will be a real hell if the dems get back in control, (not
that the present folks are helping the cause much). Damn I hope we do
not go back to the dark days of Clinton/Gore hell, (X-33,
Faster-Better-Cheaper, Russian Program Rescue, CRV, etc......). We need
some real leadership in space. I still think we would be better off
with NASA and JPL, as sep. programs, (and some sort of long term ear
mark for funding of both programs). The CBO seems to have looked at
this one straight-up this round. I'm sure that there is bitter pill to
swallow after Nov..

In concl. I do like the new/old config. of the pork launcher.

Carl

"Ed Kyle" wrote in message
ps.com...
Jonathan Goff wrote:
Ed,

Finally a government entity publishes the truth. Delta IV Heavy costs
$350 million per launch, an astonishing jump from the originally
claimed $150 million.

You keep reading a lot more into this than you ought to. Sure,
*price* has gone up to $350M. If you're only flying one or two
of them per year instead of the 6-9 or more a year that they
originally planned.

But that's the point. They are not flying 6-9 Delta IV Heavies per
year. They never were going to fly that many per year, and they
never will. The estimates were a mirage.

That is, unless NASA starts flying them to mount a lunar mission.

So Atlas V and Delta IV were bought by the US government based on
unrealistic flight rate estimates. So was the shuttle. Now here comes Ares
I/V. Do we really want to believe NASA's obviously over-optimistic flight
rate and safety estimates again? Remember the original estimate that NASA
would have a shuttle flying every couple of weeks? We never even came
close, did we? Remember the original 1 in 10,000 number for the shuttle
before Challenger proved it wrong?

If low flight rate is a problem with current launch vehicles, why allow NASA
to create Ares I/V at all? It's only going to exacerbate the low flight
rate/high overhead costs problem.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

wrote in message
oups.com...
Did anyone notice the side mounted Cargo Booster. Looks like someone is
pushing things back towards Shuttle C config. This would be a great
savings, (No retool of pad and Existing Ground Support, (on at least
one of the pads). If they go this route with Atlas as the CEV booster,
we could make this happen sooner and cheaper. Not to mention that the
work force would not need to be in major upside down turnover.

I'd rather not see a shuttle derived anything flying. The shuttle launch
infrastructure ought to be mothballed in 2011 and all NASA launches should
be purchased commercially. If that means we have to "man rate" an Atlas V,
so be it, but at least there is a far better chance of reducing
infrastructure and overhead costs with a "man rated" Atlas V than with *any*
shuttle derived launcher.

Currently low flight rate is a problem for Atlas V and Delta IV. NASA could
be part of the solution, but only if it drops this Ares I/V nonsense.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

Ed,

You keep reading a lot more into this than you ought to. Sure,
*price* has gone up to $350M. If you're only flying one or two
of them per year instead of the 6-9 or more a year that they
originally planned.

But that's the point. They are not flying 6-9 Delta IV Heavies per
year. They never were going to fly that many per year, and they
never will. The estimates were a mirage.

I need to clarify. They were basing their pricing off of 6-9 Delta IV
launches *of any variety*. I don't think they ever really expected
6-9 D-IVH flights per year. The D-IVH team is the same as the
D-IVM team as far as I understand, which means that even if they
had only one D-IVH flight per year, it'd still be a lot cheaper if they
were getting at least 6 D-IVM flights per year.

Of all the things that I would pick on Boeing over, this isn't one of
them. Even in mature markets with extremely experienced firms,
estimating long-term demand can be very tricky. It's really easy
to beat up space companies for being "unrealistic" about Teledesic
in hindsight, but how many critics today were able to tell that those
numbers were unrealistic then?

~Jon

Jeff,

I agree with a lot of your analysis, but wanted
to pick a little nit.

So Atlas V and Delta IV were bought by the US government based on
unrealistic flight rate estimates. So was the shuttle.

Um...careful here. There is a fundamental difference
between the EELVs and the Shuttle. Shuttle was
built on both unrealistic demand estimates, *and*
unrealistic supply estimates. Even if there had been
a market for 100 shuttle sized payload to LEO per
year, they couldn't have come anywhere close to the
flight rate--their vehicles were incapable of it. OTOH,
there is good reason to believe that the EELV
programs are at least physically capable of launching
as many rockets per year as they claimed (or fairly
close), it was just that the market dropped out from
underneath them by the time they entered service.
It's one thing to be niavely optimistic about the market,
and quite another thing to claim that you can fly a
vehicle a hundred times in a year, when your system
really is only capable of about a dozen flights per year,
and that's with taking all sorts of unneeded risks.

~Jon

"Jonathan Goff" wrote in message
ps.com...
Jeff,

I agree with a lot of your analysis, but wanted
to pick a little nit.

So Atlas V and Delta IV were bought by the US government based on
unrealistic flight rate estimates. So was the shuttle.

Um...careful here. There is a fundamental difference
between the EELVs and the Shuttle. Shuttle was
built on both unrealistic demand estimates, *and*
unrealistic supply estimates. Even if there had been
a market for 100 shuttle sized payload to LEO per
year, they couldn't have come anywhere close to the
flight rate--their vehicles were incapable of it. OTOH,
there is good reason to believe that the EELV
programs are at least physically capable of launching
as many rockets per year as they claimed (or fairly
close), it was just that the market dropped out from
underneath them by the time they entered service.
It's one thing to be niavely optimistic about the market,
and quite another thing to claim that you can fly a
vehicle a hundred times in a year, when your system
really is only capable of about a dozen flights per year,
and that's with taking all sorts of unneeded risks.

Agreed. In the case of the shuttle, pre-Challenger I think there was a
pretty good backlog of defense and commercial satellites that wanted to be
launched by the shuttle, so there was plenty of demand. It's just that the
supply side was the limiting factor. I remember reading about shuttle's
landing and parts being pulled from them to stick on another shuttle that
was scheduled to fly later that year. Really silly things were being done
due to lack of funding and spare parts, so there was arguably more potential
capacity in the system, given more funding.

Of course, even with quite a bit of extra funding, there were workflows
which would have limited the shuttle flight rate, so I doubt that the
originally advertised flight rate could have ever been met.

I feel Ares will never have the demand necessary to require a high flight
rate. I'm guessing demand will never grow beyond two Ares V flights per
year due to long term funding constraints. This leaves me to conclude Ares
I/V will be a low flight rate, high fixed cost launch system with the end
economic result being similar to the shuttle program.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)