Armstrong lauds another spaceman

(Henry Spencer) wrote:

:In article ,
:Fred J. McCall wrote:
::Turning the general populace into space enthusiasts *will not happen*, and
:lans which assume that it will are pointless fantasies. The only way to
::get to (say) Mars is to lower the cost to the point that overwhelming
:ublic enthusiasm is not required.
:
:Which essentially says that it will never happen, Henry, since you
:have to start going there before there is an incentive to lower the
:cost of going there.
:
:Not at all. The single technical change that would contribute most to
:lowering the cost of a Mars expedition -- much cheaper launch to LEO -- is
:desirable for a number of more immediate reasons.

And yet that doesn't seem to be progressing with great rapidity,
either. It seems that EVERY new launch system I can remember promised
to reduce cost of getting a pound to LEO to the $100 range. Yet this
is still at least an order of magnitude away, even using 'old' Russian
technology which they are willing to 'under price in order to get hard
currency. Current costs for most launchers apparently are in the
$5,000-$10,000 per pound range. This is not significantly better than
what we were able to do 30 years ago.

In fact, the actual cost of getting a pound to LEO doesn't seem to
have moved even a single order of magnitude over the entire history of
real space launchers, much less the two orders of magnitude necessary
to make 'swamping the problems with mass' really feasible.

:Indeed, you can make a half-plausible argument that this is already true:
:that even at today's launch prices, it makes sense to accept mass growth
:to save engineering man-years.

But not much. When the vehicles still cost you hundreds of millions
of dollars, it simply doesn't make much sense to put 'cheap' payloads
on them. This is why satellites and probes tend to be so
'over-engineered'. When it costs that much to deploy it, it's worth
the money to try to make things absolutely bullet proof and gold plate
everything.

:Finally, the single change of any kind (not just technical) that would
:reduce the cost of a Mars expedition most is *better management*. The
roblems of doing such a mission today are utterly dominated by the
:difficulty of doing anything *efficiently* within the NASA/JSC/MSFC
:bureaucratic empire. There is plenty of incentive for fixing that, in
ne way or another.

There is plenty of incentive for fixing it from the point of view of
those of us who want the space program to actually be accomplishing
something. However, we have to face the fact that the overwhelming
majority of taxpayers simply don't care about space and consider it a
waste of money.

Karpoff's study of the various 19th-century arctic expeditions is
:notable: the single strongest predictor of success was private funding,
:mostly because it meant unified, consistent leadership throughout.)

But to attract a lot of private funding there needs to be some
significant economic advantage over current providers.

I recently tripped over this (the original of which apparently
appeared around the time I first started reading sci.space, way back
when, and which has been revised as of 2001). It's interesting what
even an 80% reduction in price to orbit does to the number of launches
that a new launcher can capture.

http://www.dunnspace.com/csts.htm

I need to find the time to look into some of this further.

[Yes, I'm trying to reawaken some of my old interests.]

--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw

"Fred J. McCall" wrote in
:

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:

:Fred J. McCall wrote:
:
: :And the evidence that you have presented for your original
: osition is...?
:
: Price trends over the past 30+ years. Look at NASA's estimated price
: for duplicating what we did in the 1960's.
:
:This was quickly debunked right here on this group.

Well, no, it wasn't. As I said, go ahead and use the numbers the
'debunker' posted, if you like.

Most of the numbers I posted came from the Congressional Budget Office, a
source generally considered credible on financial matters and not generally
noted for its friendliness toward NASA.

Furthermore, the few numbers I posted that came from me rather than the CBO
tend to make Apollo look cheaper. For example, I compared CBO's figure of
$63.8 billion for NASA's new moon program to my figure of $77.9 billion for
the Apollo program (both programs truncated at first lunar landing, and
expressed in constant-year 2005 dollars). My Apollo figure was derived
from the current-year figures published in Dethloff and adjusted for
inflation using the GDP (Chained) Price Index published by the GPO with
each year's federal budget.

The CBO, using a different price-inflation index, arrived at a figure of
$100 billion for the Apollo program through first lunar landing. So by
their math, the new program is even more cheap than Apollo than my initial
comparison showed.

So far you have provided little justification for anyone to accept your
numbers over the CBO's numbers.

: Paul, it's quite simple. Look at the cost of the original trip to the
: moon. Now look at the cost of getting back. Even if you buy that
: NASA's numbers aren't just a bit rigged, the price reduction over all
: those decades is just pretty damned small.
:
:It's there, though. Small != zero.

So we only need wait another half a millennia or so for things to
eventually come down in price to the point where what you say makes
sense?

Well, at least you're no longer claiming that NASA's figures show that the
new program will be *more* expensive than Apollo. I will take progress
where I can get it.

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
...
"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:

:Fred J. McCall wrote:
:
: :I repeat: your position would require that the technologies for
: :Mars vehicles be completely disjoint from those used in the rest
: f the technosphere.
:
: You can repeat it all you like, but you haven't shown it to be true.
: That takes real data and real examples.
:
:And the evidence that you have presented for your original
osition is...?

Price trends over the past 30+ years. Look at NASA's estimated price
for duplicating what we did in the 1960's. Even then I suspect some
of the numbers are being jiggered a bit to lower current costs
compared to what was necessary back then in the way of investment in
infrastructure.

:'Spin-on' technologies occur *all the time*. That's why we
:have rockets in the first place -- all sorts of mundane technologies
:that were developed for other reasons, but enabled the production
f spacecraft. Why should this suddenly stop? You are proposing
:a sea change in how technology progresses, with no supporting
:evidence whatsoever.

Paul, it's quite simple. Look at the cost of the original trip to the
moon. Now look at the cost of getting back. Even if you buy that
NASA's numbers aren't just a bit rigged, the price reduction over all
those decades is just pretty damned small.

Look at the cost of currently getting a pound of stuff to orbit back
in the 1960s. Look at the cost of doing the same now. Again, the
price reduction over all those decades is just pretty damned small.

I think you're confusing (or at least mixing) technological costs with labor
costs. The later has grown substantially over the past 40 years in spite of
the reductions in the former.


So you can 'spin on' all you like. The facts don't seem to bear out
your contentions. They do seem to support mine. The fact that you
don't like that doesn't change it.

Neither does your claim that I've presented no evidence when I have
done precisely that and you have not.

--
"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the
soul with evil."
-- Socrates

"me" wrote:

:"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
.. .
: "Paul F. Dietz" wrote:
:
: :Fred J. McCall wrote:
: :
: : :I repeat: your position would require that the technologies for
: : :Mars vehicles be completely disjoint from those used in the rest
: : f the technosphere.
: :
: : You can repeat it all you like, but you haven't shown it to be true.
: : That takes real data and real examples.
: :
: :And the evidence that you have presented for your original
: osition is...?
:
: Price trends over the past 30+ years. Look at NASA's estimated price
: for duplicating what we did in the 1960's. Even then I suspect some
: of the numbers are being jiggered a bit to lower current costs
: compared to what was necessary back then in the way of investment in
: infrastructure.
:
: :'Spin-on' technologies occur *all the time*. That's why we
: :have rockets in the first place -- all sorts of mundane technologies
: :that were developed for other reasons, but enabled the production
: f spacecraft. Why should this suddenly stop? You are proposing
: :a sea change in how technology progresses, with no supporting
: :evidence whatsoever.
:
: Paul, it's quite simple. Look at the cost of the original trip to the
: moon. Now look at the cost of getting back. Even if you buy that
: NASA's numbers aren't just a bit rigged, the price reduction over all
: those decades is just pretty damned small.
:
: Look at the cost of currently getting a pound of stuff to orbit back
: in the 1960s. Look at the cost of doing the same now. Again, the
: price reduction over all those decades is just pretty damned small.
:
:I think you're confusing (or at least mixing) technological costs with labor
:costs. The later has grown substantially over the past 40 years in spite of
:the reductions in the former.

Costs are costs. The cost is what it takes to get the job done,
regardless of the mix of capital and labour used.

Bottom line is that these costs (getting to the Moon, putting a pound
in LEO) have not dropped appreciably in decades. Claims that such a
price drop will magically happen seem to simply fly in the face of
reality.

--
"It's always different. It's always complex. But at some point,
somebody has to draw the line. And that somebody is always me....
I am the law."
-- Buffy, The Vampire Slayer

In article ,
Fred J. McCall wrote:
:...The single technical change that would contribute most to
:lowering the cost of a Mars expedition -- much cheaper launch to LEO -- is
:desirable for a number of more immediate reasons.

And yet that doesn't seem to be progressing with great rapidity, either.

Yes, because almost nobody has tried. The only great progress seen in
that department so far was the introduction of Russian launchers.

We'll see how SpaceX does.

It seems that EVERY new launch system I can remember promised
to reduce cost of getting a pound to LEO to the $100 range.

Uh, no, practically none of the new launch systems which were actually
*carried through to operational status* made any such promise. (The
EELVs made far less ambitious promises of very modest cost reductions.)
"You can't win if you don't play."

is still at least an order of magnitude away, even using 'old' Russian
technology which they are willing to 'under price in order to get hard
currency...

Whether Russian launchers are actually underpriced is not clear. They
*are* inherently cheaper than Western designs, due to more automation on
production lines and much less manpower-intensive operations, even if you
disregard the small matter of lower wages.

Current costs for most launchers apparently are in the
$5,000-$10,000 per pound range.

Russian launchers are already well below that range, possibly a long way
below it if you have a sharp negotiator and are doing something unusual
(that is, something where they can't be accused of undercutting Western
competitors if they offer you a big price break).

In fact, the actual cost of getting a pound to LEO doesn't seem to
have moved even a single order of magnitude over the entire history of
real space launchers...

Hardly surprising, given how little real innovation there has been in
launcher design, and how few truly new launch systems have been developed,
for most of that history.

The stunning cost reductions in electronics in the same period were not
achieved by refining production methods for vacuum tubes. Nor did they
come from pioneering initiatives by vacuum-tube manufacturers.

:Indeed, you can make a half-plausible argument that this is already true:
:that even at today's launch prices, it makes sense to accept mass growth
:to save engineering man-years.

But not much. When the vehicles still cost you hundreds of millions
of dollars, it simply doesn't make much sense to put 'cheap' payloads
on them.

When the payloads cost billions or even tens of billions to develop, it
can and does make sense to buy more hundred-million launches to reduce
development costs (even disregarding the possibility of launch-cost
reductions via bulk discounts). Except in a few vaguely-mature areas
like comsats, the payloads cost *much* more than the launches now.

...However, we have to face the fact that the overwhelming
majority of taxpayers simply don't care about space and consider it a
waste of money.

The overwhelming majority of taxpayers like space exploration (hint: ISS
is not doing exploration) and think modest funding for it is a good idea.
What they don't support is the sort of funding that would be needed to do
manned exploration the JSC way.

The logical conclusion from that is that we can't do it the JSC way, not
that we can't do it at all.

Karpoff's study of the various 19th-century arctic expeditions is
:notable: the single strongest predictor of success was private funding,
:mostly because it meant unified, consistent leadership throughout.)

But to attract a lot of private funding there needs to be some
significant economic advantage over current providers.

Very few of the arctic expeditions promised any sort of economic return
at all. Private funding doesn't have to mean profit-making ventures
(although it does help -- profitable projects can easily get up into
the billions, while non-profit private funding tends to top out in the
low hundreds of millions, last I heard).
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

Well, they had a cycle-powered plane fly across the English Channel,
but the Moon is a little far!

(Henry Spencer) wrote:
The overwhelming majority of taxpayers like space exploration (hint: ISS
is not doing exploration) and think modest funding for it is a good idea.

The overwhelming majority of (US) taxpayers like the stunts and
spectaculars that they have been misled into believing constitute
exploration. Real exploration would bore the taxpayers (and most
space fanboys) to tears.

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

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

Henry Spencer wrote:
Very few of the arctic expeditions promised any sort of economic
return at all. Private funding doesn't have to mean profit-making
ventures (although it does help -- profitable projects can easily
get up into the billions, while non-profit private funding tends to
top out in the low hundreds of millions, last I heard).

I wonder how much naming rights could be sold for?

Note the origin of the name of the northernmost point in mainland
Canada.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.

In article ,
Keith F. Lynch wrote:
I wonder how much naming rights could be sold for?
Note the origin of the name of the northernmost point in mainland
Canada.

If memory serves, there are a number of features in Antarctica named for
various expedition sponsors. (And I just noticed, looking at a map, that
among the mountains there is the mysterious "Executive Committee Range".
I kid you not.)

Selling naming rights would be hampered somewhat by the fact that names on
astronomical bodies are not generally recognized until/unless approved by
the IAU. That adds an element of uncertainty to the process.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

(Henry Spencer) wrote:

:In article ,
:Fred J. McCall wrote:
::...The single technical change that would contribute most to
::lowering the cost of a Mars expedition -- much cheaper launch to LEO -- is
::desirable for a number of more immediate reasons.
:
:And yet that doesn't seem to be progressing with great rapidity, either.
:
:Yes, because almost nobody has tried.

I remember original Shuttle promises of prices in the range of $100/lb
to orbit. Then they started compromising.

:The only great progress seen in
:that department so far was the introduction of Russian launchers.

And this is a fluke.

:It seems that EVERY new launch system I can remember promised
:to reduce cost of getting a pound to LEO to the $100 range.
:
:Uh, no, practically none of the new launch systems which were actually
:*carried through to operational status* made any such promise. (The
:EELVs made far less ambitious promises of very modest cost reductions.)
:"You can't win if you don't play."

Well, not by the time they actually built operational hardware they
didn't. However, one of the big reasons why Shuttle got built was the
original contention that it would be orders of magnitude cheaper.
That was before the compromises started and we got the current system,
of course. There were originally plans to build a small fixed number
(5, I think, but I'm not sure) of Shuttles for NASA and then to
license their manufacture for private purposes.

Never happened, of course, since the cost to orbit was just like every
other launcher of the time and there was no comparative advantage at
all (and the Shuttle as built required FAR too much 'refurbishment'
after each flight to operate economically).

:is still at least an order of magnitude away, even using 'old' Russian
:technology which they are willing to 'under price in order to get hard
:currency...
:
:Whether Russian launchers are actually underpriced is not clear. They
:*are* inherently cheaper than Western designs, due to more automation on
roduction lines and much less manpower-intensive operations, even if you
:disregard the small matter of lower wages.

Is the 'more automation' claim really true? I find that rather hard
to believe, given the general state of Russian manufacturing. I would
think the price advantage was due to some small economies of scale
(they do build more of them), lower wage costs, and a huge currency
advantage when selling for hard currency.

:Current costs for most launchers apparently are in the
:$5,000-$10,000 per pound range.
:
:Russian launchers are already well below that range, possibly a long way
:below it if you have a sharp negotiator and are doing something unusual
that is, something where they can't be accused of undercutting Western
:competitors if they offer you a big price break).

That seems to depend on where you're going (and I misread a table when
I got my figure above - it was for GSO vice LEO).

:In fact, the actual cost of getting a pound to LEO doesn't seem to
:have moved even a single order of magnitude over the entire history of
:real space launchers...
:
:Hardly surprising, given how little real innovation there has been in
:launcher design, and how few truly new launch systems have been developed,
:for most of that history.

Yes, but one is left wondering why there hasn't been such innovation
and push to lower costs.

It seems to me that this is a 'chicken and egg' sort of problem.
Payloads are expensive because launchers are expensive and if you're
going to spend that kind of money to get your payload up, that payload
better be engineered to death to maximize life span and such.
Launchers stay expensive because nobody wants to put their expensive
payload up on a cheap rocket for fear that the rocket will fail. So
the rockets don't get changed much, either.

::Indeed, you can make a half-plausible argument that this is already true:
::that even at today's launch prices, it makes sense to accept mass growth
::to save engineering man-years.
:
:But not much. When the vehicles still cost you hundreds of millions
:of dollars, it simply doesn't make much sense to put 'cheap' payloads
:on them.
:
:When the payloads cost billions or even tens of billions to develop, it
:can and does make sense to buy more hundred-million launches to reduce
:development costs (even disregarding the possibility of launch-cost
:reductions via bulk discounts). Except in a few vaguely-mature areas
:like comsats, the payloads cost *much* more than the launches now.

In other words, when taxpayer pockets are available price of the
payload is no object? This philosophy is what has hurt planetary
science so badly, just by the way. The era of the 'giant probes'
meant that there couldn't be very many of them in the pipeline because
the budget for billion dollar probe programs just wasn't large enough
to sustain that.

:...However, we have to face the fact that the overwhelming
:majority of taxpayers simply don't care about space and consider it a
:waste of money.
:
:The overwhelming majority of taxpayers like space exploration (hint: ISS
:is not doing exploration) and think modest funding for it is a good idea.
:What they don't support is the sort of funding that would be needed to do
:manned exploration the JSC way.

The overwhelming majority of taxpayers like space exploration. What
they don't like is PAYING for space exploration at the expense of
something else. When it comes to ranking the budget, where does space
exploration fall in the list?

:The logical conclusion from that is that we can't do it the JSC way, not
:that we can't do it at all.

Unless you propose funding it privately, I'm not sure what you're
saying here.

:Karpoff's study of the various 19th-century arctic expeditions is
::notable: the single strongest predictor of success was private funding,
::mostly because it meant unified, consistent leadership throughout.)
:
:But to attract a lot of private funding there needs to be some
:significant economic advantage over current providers.
:
:Very few of the arctic expeditions promised any sort of economic return
:at all. Private funding doesn't have to mean profit-making ventures
although it does help -- profitable projects can easily get up into
:the billions, while non-profit private funding tends to top out in the
:low hundreds of millions, last I heard).

And that sort of private funding simply isn't available for
'speculative' things like space exploration.

--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw