The Shuttle just gets worse with thought (was Launch cost thought experiment)

> From: Ian Woollard
> The shuttle could do it, but you would need more
> infrastructure around it.

At three months repair per flight? Sure you could do it, if you had 13
orbiters. Or entirely new vehicles.

> > Congress wanted the shuttle to cost nothing
> They wanted a jobs program.

If they did they wanted one that costed less than NASA wanted to spend. NASA
said it woudl cost $10B. Congress told them no.

> > USAF wanted the shuttle to do everything
>
> They really wanted expendables.

They wanted both. That's why they gave NASA a few billion in exchange for
the crippling payload capacity and cross range requirement. The selection of
silica tile as a TPS was driven by these two requirements. Massive payload,
massive cross range, for negligable R&D is pretty much everything when it
comes to RLVs.

> > NASA wanted an excuse to keep its work force
>
> Yup, although they also wanted to continue to go into space, and they
> wanted to build a space station and then go onto Mars with the
> Dumbkopf Plan that involved a space station.

Then they should have had the gumption to turn around to congress and the
DOD and say, "Sorry, can't be done." They did that with Clinton and the
space station. Pity they didn't do it twenty years earlier. :(

John