X-15 Program Cost

On 2004-06-27, Darren J Longhorn wrote:
On 27 Jun 2004 23:13:24 GMT, Andrew Gray
wrote:

I'm curious as to "mission control"; is that the facility or the
staffing, or is it the costs of administering the "construction test"
program?

There's no more detail than that given in the table, so I don't know.

Incidentally, elsewhere in the text it states that "The cost per
flight of 27 X-15 flights was $602L (1964$)".

I wonder which 27, not that that really means much - but by 1964, they'd
flown a good 127 flights (well, almost, #127 was actually in 1965)

(I assume that L is either an M or a K, and K sounds more plausible...
g)

--
-Andrew Gray

On 27 Jun 2004 23:33:40 GMT, Andrew Gray
wrote:

I wonder which 27, not that that really means much - but by 1964, they'd
flown a good 127 flights (well, almost, #127 was actually in 1965)

It sort of implies that it was the 27 flights made in 1964, but I
don't know if there _were_ 27 flights made in 1964.

(I assume that L is either an M or a K, and K sounds more plausible...
g)

Yes K, sorry about that - finger trouble!.

On 27 Jun 2004 23:13:24 GMT, Andrew Gray
wrote:


(Were the two B-52s NASA owned/operated, or still USAF?)

Yes. Of course.

The NB-52s were operated by Dryden throughout the program, having been
bailed by the USAF. The NB-52A, 003, belonged to the USAF. The
NB-52B, 008, belonged to the USAF until about 1957, when it was
transferred to NASA.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

Hi all


"Andrew Gray" wrote in message
. ..
Hey all.

A while ago I had a little look for some numbers on this, and couldn't
seem to find much more than rough estimates (generally in the "n hundred
million" region).

Does anyone happen to have some numbers for, well, something? It's
generally fairly easy to find some set of numbers for (say) Mercury, but
possibly due to the lower-key status of X-15 it's harder to run across
anything.

Much appreciated, &c

I have no idea of how much of a grain of salt you need to take this with
but:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...5conf/log.html

Straight from the horse (NASA's) mouth.

Paragraph 8:

I quote: " Total cost of the X-15 program, including development of the
three aircraft, was about $300 million. "

This figure seems a little um... conservative compared with some of the
figures quote elsewhere in the thread.... NASA's creative accounting,
perhaps?

This link is part of a much bigger NASA website on the whole X-15 program,
which makes for fascinating reading if you've got the time (there is lots to
read).



--
-Andrew Gray



Regards
Frank Scrooby
(Nothing against NASA, just don't like creative accounting)

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 19:20:58 -0700, Mary Shafer
wrote:

The NB-52s were operated by Dryden throughout the program, having been
bailed by the USAF. The NB-52A, 003, belonged to the USAF. The
NB-52B, 008, belonged to the USAF until about 1957, when it was
transferred to NASA.

....And now, for the question that begs answering: Did you ever get to
fly on one of them? ;-)

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On 2004-06-28, Darren J Longhorn wrote:
On 27 Jun 2004 23:33:40 GMT, Andrew Gray
wrote:

I wonder which 27, not that that really means much - but by 1964, they'd
flown a good 127 flights (well, almost, #127 was actually in 1965)

It sort of implies that it was the 27 flights made in 1964, but I
don't know if there _were_ 27 flights made in 1964.

On examination of the flight log, looks like there were.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...5conf/log.html

(thanks, Frank)

(I assume that L is either an M or a K, and K sounds more plausible...
g)

Yes K, sorry about that - finger trouble!.

g Too close to the M key for comfort, though ;-)

Jenkins (Space Shuttle, 3rd ed, pp 8) mentions a vlaue of $68,323,030 as
the "total cost including development for 10 [engines]", plus a
$6,014,000 fee to Reaction Motors. Doesn't give a year, but notes

"Ironically, the engine cost was over five times the original estimated
cost for the entire X-15 program, and the fee paid to Reaction Motors
was greater than the original estimated cost of the entire engine
research, development and production program."

He later notes, again not giving a year, that "the entire X-15 program,
inclusive of all engines and support expenses, cost over
$150,000,000"... which, to my eyeballing, looks like the order of
magnitude of an Apollo landing.

--
-Andrew Gray

On 2004-06-28, Frank Scrooby wrote:

I have no idea of how much of a grain of salt you need to take this with
but:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...5conf/log.html

Straight from the horse (NASA's) mouth.

Paragraph 8:

I quote: " Total cost of the X-15 program, including development of the
three aircraft, was about $300 million. "

This figure seems a little um... conservative compared with some of the
figures quote elsewhere in the thread.... NASA's creative accounting,
perhaps?

Remember that it's from ~1990, and Lord only knows when the others are
from... at least, I assume it's ~1990 dollars, it's not hedged around,
it's in a relatively informal 1989 document...

This link is part of a much bigger NASA website on the whole X-15 program,
which makes for fascinating reading if you've got the time (there is lots to
read).

There's certainly some interesting anecdotes buried in there.

--
-Andrew Gray

Darren J Longhorn wrote:

Cost, Percentage
millions of total
of dollars
64$ 84$ (snip)


Total 162.80 515.68 100


Does it give the impression this is per article or for the three flight
units?


As you can see above, it appears to be for all three.


I've heard Allen has invested 20 million in SS1.

Is it fair to say Rutan has accomplished sending a man past 100 km with
about 1/10 of NASA's expenditure?

--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

In article ,
Hop David writes:


Darren J Longhorn wrote:

Cost, Percentage
millions of total
of dollars
64$ 84$ (snip)


Total 162.80 515.68 100


Does it give the impression this is per article or for the three flight
units?


As you can see above, it appears to be for all three.


I've heard Allen has invested 20 million in SS1.

Is it fair to say Rutan has accomplished sending a man past 100 km with
about 1/10 of NASA's expenditure?

No, not really. SS1's sole purpose is to carry a pilot adn 2
passenger-equivalant loads to 100 Km and that's it.

The X-15's purpose was to collect flight and environmental data from
teh hypersonic region, and to determine if piloted lifting reentry was
feasible. One of teh things that helps keep SS1's costs as low as
they are is that it doesn't have to go fast - the aerodynamic heating
from the speeds that it reaches are well handled by conventional
meterials. Once you start getting into the regions where aero heating
is significant, the mateiels get exotic, and costs start increasing
but quick.


--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

In article ,
says...
I've heard Allen has invested 20 million in SS1.

Is it fair to say Rutan has accomplished sending a man past 100 km with
about 1/10 of NASA's expenditure?

Very roughly, there was an order-of-magnitude change in the value of the
dollar due to inflation between X-15 and SS1. Inflation is a bitch.

From what I recall from Thompson's "At the Edge of Space", the X-15 was
overbuilt in several ways, just because they didn't know what they'd run
into. The data collected from the X-15 allowed latter hypersonic /
space-altiude planes to be less overbuilt.

I'd be interested in knowing how much, if at all, the X-15 results
influenced the design of SS1.
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

Imagine that, a FROG ON-OFF switch, hardly the work
for test pilots. -- Mike Collins