Costs of Shuttle Fuel

N. Foldager wrote:
I've been asked how much the fuel for a single space
shuttle launch
is. I.e. the pure, directly costs for oxygen,
hydrogen and
solidfuel for one launch.

Does anybody have an idea?

Here's a start:

http://yarchive.net/space/rocket/fuels/fuel_costs.html

On 2005-02-20, N Foldager wrote:

I've been asked how much the fuel for a single space shuttle launch
is. I.e. the pure, directly costs for oxygen, hydrogen and
solidfuel for one launch.

Hard to come up with a value - LOX and LH2 are freely available, but the
SRBs are purchased only by NASA, and they don't buy only the fuel...

astronautix.com quotes a marginal cost of $63m per flight, which is the
cost involved with adding just one flight to the manifest, ignoring
"fixed costs" - this comes out as a shade under $100m, after adjusting
for inflation, so we know that the total cost of fuel must be *under*
that. I'd take a wild guess at $60m inclusive of SRBs, which would be
the most significant part of the cost by far.

(As a comparison point, the fuel for a Saturn V would be around, oh,
$2m)

--
-Andrew Gray

"Andrew Gray" wrote in message
. ..
On 2005-02-20, N Foldager wrote:

I've been asked how much the fuel for a single space shuttle launch
is. I.e. the pure, directly costs for oxygen, hydrogen and
solidfuel for one launch.

Hard to come up with a value - LOX and LH2 are freely available, but the
SRBs are purchased only by NASA, and they don't buy only the fuel...

astronautix.com quotes a marginal cost of $63m per flight, which is the
cost involved with adding just one flight to the manifest, ignoring
"fixed costs" - this comes out as a shade under $100m, after adjusting
for inflation, so we know that the total cost of fuel must be *under*
that. I'd take a wild guess at $60m inclusive of SRBs, which would be
the most significant part of the cost by far.

Actually the ET comes out to abuot $65 million I believe.

The fuel for the shuttle probably comes in about the same cost as the Saturn
V.



(As a comparison point, the fuel for a Saturn V would be around, oh,
$2m)

--
-Andrew Gray

On 2005-02-21, Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:

astronautix.com quotes a marginal cost of $63m per flight, which is the
cost involved with adding just one flight to the manifest, ignoring
"fixed costs" - this comes out as a shade under $100m, after adjusting
for inflation, so we know that the total cost of fuel must be *under*
that. I'd take a wild guess at $60m inclusive of SRBs, which would be
the most significant part of the cost by far.

Actually the ET comes out to abuot $65 million I believe.

[headdesk] How could I forget the ET? I feel a right idiot now.

(And *they* say it's a stupid error, too g)

The fuel for the shuttle probably comes in about the same cost as the Saturn
V.

In terms of liquids, yeah. Any idea how much the SRBs would come to? I'm
really not sure how to estimate a cost there, but now I think about it
it's quite possible the astronautix figure (presumably a number that
appeared as part of the RTF navel-gazing) covers only
SRBs+ET+consumables - although the fuel is likely to be almost in the
noise, there.

--
-Andrew Gray

God, you got a trainee bean counter over there, better warn them of the
error of their ways before thy get old enough to really screw up the world!

:-)

Brian

--

Brian Gaff....Note, this account does not accept Bcc: email.
graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email:
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"N. Foldager" wrote in message
...

I've been asked how much the fuel for a single space shuttle launch
is. I.e. the pure, directly costs for oxygen, hydrogen and
solidfuel for one launch.

Does anybody have an idea?

Best regards,

Niels Foldager