$64 Billion and seventeen years to land on the moon. What's wrong with this picture?

(ed kyle) writes:
Recent annual shuttle budgets were in the $3.2 billion range.
A steady shuttle-derived heavy lift (SDV) program, free of
the labor-intensive orbiter processing requirements, could
cost 2/3rds as much. At four launches per year, each launch,
capable of putting roughly three EELV-Heavy equivalents
(75 metric tons) in LEO, would cost roughly $533 million -
probably putting it below the recently increased price point
per kg of EELV-Heavy. More importantly, an SDV would simplify
lunar mission planning by reducing the number and coordination
of required launches - helping reduce the cost of spacecraft
and mission payloads.

This assumes you launch 4 SDV's every year. If you don't, all you
really save is the cost of an ET and the cost of two reloaded SRB's.
All other costs remain whether you launch 4 times or zero.

Miss one luanch in a year, and your per launch cost goes up
significantly. Miss three launches, and your per luanch cost (for
that single launch) is likely to be in the $2 billion range. Miss all
four luanches, and your "per launch cost" for the year isn't even
defined.

Jeff
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(Hallerb) writes:
Now before someone else asks how about keeping a servicable shuttle around for
specific jobs and flying it unmanned? Gut most of the man needed capacity and
totally automate it.

Gutting would boost the weight capacity and we could still have the ability to
retuirn large payloads if thats even needed?

You'll have to spend development money to make it unmanned. The cost
of this should be spread out over all unmanned flights to get the per
flight cost.

It also makes flying the shuttle more risky. There are many
emergency procedures on the shuttle that require people on-board. Not
the least of which is the contingency EVA for closing the payload bay
doors (if they don't close automatically).

Jeff
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In article ,
ed kyle wrote:
...At four launches per year, each launch,
capable of putting roughly three EELV-Heavy equivalents
(75 metric tons) in LEO, would cost roughly $533 million -
probably putting it below the recently increased price point
per kg of EELV-Heavy...

Note that the recent EELV price increases occurred solely and only because
of lack of business. The prices will go *down*, not up, if NASA places a
bulk order.
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On 01 Mar 2004 06:27:36 GMT, "Jorge R. Frank"
wrote:

Scott Ferrin wrote in
:

On 01 Mar 2004 05:45:17 GMT, "Jorge R. Frank"
wrote:

Scott Ferrin wrote in
:


This week's AW&ST:

"Pressed by Congress for cost estimates on Bush's Moon/Mars
exploration plan, NASA releases some figures to back up its pretty
but imprecise "sand chart" that purports to demonstrate there's no
hidden cost "balloon" in the plan (AW&ST Jan. 26, p. 22). According
to the Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service, NASA
assumes it will cost $64 billion in Fiscal 2003 dollars to land
humans on the Moon in 2020. That amount includes $24 billion to
build and operate the proposed Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV)
through 2020, plus $40 billion in Fiscal 2011-20 to build and
operate a CEV lunar lander. "

That's about two-thirds the cost of Apollo, in current dollars. That
sounds about right, considering that 1) we've done it before, but 2)
everyone who did it the first time is retired or dead.

What did *you* find wrong with the picture?


Seventeen years.

There's two possible responses to this:

1) The actual date for the first lunar return in the plan was a range
between 2015-2020, and CRS automatically picked the most pessimistic. It
could happen sooner.

2) Even if it is 2020, why hurry? The artificial deadline placed on Apollo
helped force some design decisions that ensured that the program would be
too expensive to sustain.

The idea isn't so much to hurry but to not waste time. Look at any
military procurement effort and you'll see that the longer you stretch
it out the more costs skyrocket. There isn't really any new
technology to develope so why stretch it out when you don't need to?
So you can develope an engine that gets two more Isp and costs five
times as much? I probably sound like a broken record (for those who
remember records LOL) but until they bring launch costs down
substantially, nothing significant is going to be affordable. If they
were serious about going to the moon and mars the first order of
business would be funding the developement of a CHEAP way to get
pounds into orbit. As it is, it just looks like more vaporware for
political purposes.

In article , jeff findley wrote:
"Bruce Sterling Woodcock" writes:

One should say that Challenger was an STS accident
not a Shuttle accident... in other words, the launch
vehicle failed, not the orbital vehicle.

True. But there was the mission where one SSME was shut down, and the
crew had to inhibit the sensors on the remaining SSME's in order to
get into orbit. Arguably that's a launch vehicle failure, but oddly
enough in that case, the launch vehicle *is* the orbital vehicle.

Hmm.

STS-9, pretty undeniably a) not a launch-vehicle failure b) close.

--
-Andrew Gray

In article , jeff findley wrote:

It's a system integration failure. It would have been o.k. for the ET
to shed foam, if it weren't for the shuttle bolted to the side. The
problem was studied, but it was assumed that the RCC was "tougher"
than the tiles. That's an engineering failure *and* a management
failure for not properly solving this system integration issue that
surfaced on STS-1.

Oh - AIUI, it didn't. The tile loss on STS-1 was due almost entirely, I
believe, to SRB-related pressure waves. Falling debris was a problem
early, though.

--
-Andrew Gray

Kent Betts wrote:

"Scott Lowther"

The ISS started as a US operation, but the Soviets have come on
board in a big way.

Yeah. Look how well THAT worked out.

I am looking and I see that the Russians are now doing the crew changes and
the cargo delivery.

Crws that do little except maintain a hunk of junk. Had it been a *real*
space station, without the State Department mucking it up with
extraneous Russian crap, it'd be much better. Might actually be gettign
some science data back.


--
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On 01 Mar 2004 17:16:37 -0500, jeff findley
wrote:


Miss one luanch in a year, and your per launch cost goes up
significantly. Miss three launches, and your per luanch cost (for
that single launch) is likely to be in the $2 billion range. Miss all
four luanches, and your "per launch cost" for the year isn't even
defined.

By the same token, launch six SDVs (say, four lunar flights, JIMO, and
a Pentagon NMD payload) and the costs come down further. You need to
average costs over more than a year.

Brian

On or about Mon, 01 Mar 2004 21:20:29 GMT, Bruce Sterling Woodcock made the sensational claim that:
One should say that Challenger was an STS accident
not a Shuttle accident... in other words, the launch
vehicle failed, not the orbital vehicle.

I don't know why this got drilled into my head so well, but your defination
means Challenger *was* a shuttle failure, as I believe NASA refers to the
entire stack as the "Shuttle", and the orbiter alone is of course the
"Orbiter".

Which begs the question why is it called the "Shuttle" Landing Facility and
not the "Orbiter" landing facility?
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"LooseChanj" wrote in message
om...
On or about Mon, 01 Mar 2004 21:20:29 GMT, Bruce Sterling Woodcock
made the sensational claim that:
One should say that Challenger was an STS accident
not a Shuttle accident... in other words, the launch
vehicle failed, not the orbital vehicle.

I don't know why this got drilled into my head so well, but your
defination
means Challenger *was* a shuttle failure, as I believe NASA refers to the
entire stack as the "Shuttle", and the orbiter alone is of course the
"Orbiter".

Which begs the question why is it called the "Shuttle" Landing Facility
and
not the "Orbiter" landing facility?

I thought NASA refered to the entire thing as "STS" and the
orbiter itself is referred to as the shuttle, the orbiter, etc.

This seems obvious when one considers that Atlantis,
Endeavour, Discovery are called Shuttles, and they
don't change names every time they get new SRBs
and an external tank.

But, this could be just a primitive form of the old
Metaphysics question of replacing every board and
nail in a ship. (Or the old joke: "I've had this same
axe for 40 years! Replaced the handle three times
and the head twice!")

Bruce