Jeff, why waste the time?

In sci.space.policy Jeff Findley wrote:

"Eric Chomko" wrote in message
...

Even then, if ELVs can come down and still be cheaper they will continure
to stay.

It's unlikely they can come down in price by much. As I keep saying, if you
try to lower cost of an ELV too much, you start negatively impacting safety
and reliability. These two are at directly at odds with each other when you
have an expendable vehicle.

No, that's exactly wrong. Low-cost and improved safety go hand-in-hand,
since they're both derived from improved quality.

I'm sure you're familiar with "Cost, schedule, quality. Pick two."

Those words are the bane of every sane aerospace engineer in the industry,
often used as a crutch by the incompetent to justify their poor perfor-
mance. Increasing quality *decreases* cost and schedule, not the
opposite.

ELV's
are particularly troublesome because of the high reoccuring costs due to
throwing away the entire vehicle on each flight. Since you can't reuse the
vehicle, to make them cheaper, you're going to impact something else. Since
the schedule (rate of production) is fixed by customer demand, the only
thing that you can (negatively) impact is quality (reliability).

Again, if done properly, increasing quality reduces cost *and* improves
reliability. There's no reason why ELV's can't take advantage of this
phenomenon the same as RLV's do.

ELV's are simply not a viable long term option, especially if we ever want
to open up new markets.

That may be true, but it's due to flight rate, not quality.

To that end, NASA should be working on lots of little (relatively
inexpensive) technology demonstrators (i.e. hardware that flies) in order to
demonstrate that reusable components can be highly reliable in a launch
vehicle.

No argument there.

DC-X was an example of such a project. Before it flew, there were many
people that said the project *couldn't* meet its goals because working with
LOX/LH2 rocket engines on an actual flight vehicle had to be expensive, time
consuming, and manpower intensive. The flight test program proved
otherwise. It's my belief that inexpensive flying hardware (as opposed to
expensive hangar queens like X-33) does more to help the industry than
anything else.

I completely agree.

Just make sure NASA isn't allowed to take on another X-33 like project, and
definately don't let them start working on "the next generation launch
vehicle" (e.g. STS-II, NASP, shuttle derived vehicle, and etc.). They've
proven that as a government agency who's budget is limited by the whim of
the congress and administration, they simply aren't good at developing cheap
to fly launch vehicles.

I think Mike Griffen is proving this correct even as we type.

Mike

-----
Michael Kent Apple II Forever!!
St. Peters, MO

Michael Kent wrote:
[...]
No, that's exactly wrong. Low-cost and improved safety go hand-in-hand,
since they're both derived from improved quality.

I'm sure you're familiar with "Cost, schedule, quality. Pick two."

Those words are the bane of every sane aerospace engineer in the industry,
often used as a crutch by the incompetent to justify their poor perfor-
mance. Increasing quality *decreases* cost and schedule, not the
opposite.

I think your viewpoint here is correct in scenarios where the
unit marginal cost (of whatever, a widget or RLV flight or
satellite) over the program is high compared to initial design
and production line setup costs.

Space economics is not in that corner of the trade space right now,
with very few exceptions.

We know we need to head that direction, but there are engineering
community inertia issues with going there, and user demand type
issues with going there, and neither is easy to make go away.


-george william herbert

(George William Herbert) wrote:

We know we need to head that direction, but there are engineering
community inertia issues with going there, and user demand type
issues with going there, and neither is easy to make go away.

Well said.

I hear people saying "Private enterprise will make them go away," and
"high build/flight rate will make them go away," and "my neglected
favorite design tweak will make them go away," and occasionally even
"one more lean mean NASA re-org will make them go away."

They don't seem to be in a hurry to go.