Shuttle costs

For the most part I agree with you, but you forgot one major point -
economies of scale, and that is what everyone is saying. Do you have
to pay 1000 engineers 50 times more to launch 50 shuttles per year as
opposed to 1?

If you want to get into costs you break them up into fixed costs
(costs that get paid even if no shuttles are launched) and variable
costs (cost per launch). The question then becomes how much of the
cost is fixed, and how much is variable. If fixed cost is 90% of total
you will decrease prices significantly by increasing flights/year. If
the fixed cost is small there is no real savings.

This is text book economics.

On conspiracies - NASA is not conspiring to keep costs high. NASA is
just another bureaucracy. It is following rules that were put in place
40 years ago which may or maynot hinder innovation. This is why 486
chips are not yet allowed in space applications.

Bill

--- In spacesettlers@y..., Al Globus wrote:
> Mike has really got this one right. Many people on this mailing
list
> seem to assume that, because they don't understand why spaceflight
is
> expensive, the high cost must be a nefarious plot by evil
conspirators
> in NASA to thwart their dreams. Alternately, NASA is considered
> incompetant despite achieving dozens of difficult goals no one else
has
> ever accoplished. For example, landing on the Moon, partially
reusable
> launch, 1% launcher failure rate, rovers on Mars, soft landing on an
> asteroid, etc., etc., etc.
>
> The truth is much more prosaic. Spaceflight is difficult, orders of
> magnitude more difficult than aircraft because, among other things,
the
> velocities are more than an order of magnitude greater and energy
scales
> with the *square* of the velocity. High energies make huge demands
on
> systems and materials requiring extensive engineering, test, and
> refurbishment. This requires lots of people, and people in the US
are
> expensive.
>
> NASA contains a large number of people and these people are, to
first
> order, about the same as any other large group of people. They are
no
> more evil than you are. They are no less compentent than you are.
> Furthermore, NASA is very open (for example, see the huge web
sites).
> Such openess would have difficulty sustaining the evil plots
> hypothesized.
>
> Finally, note that there are a number of space launcher efforts in
this
> world that are not controlled by NASA (Russia, Ukraine, China,
Europe,
> India, and Japan). Most of these have only reduced launch costs
> marginally, which is expected. Where they have reduced cost
> substantially (mostly Russia) it can be attributed to low cost
personel,
> writing off development costs, and some very good rocket design.
> Interestingly, many US efforts to develop new launchers depend on
> Russian engines.
>
> From: Ian Woollard [mailto:ian.woollard@t...]
>
> Even the space shuttle would cost many times less if it
> could launch every week.
>
> So what I get from this is that when NASA said the Shuttle would be
much
> cheaper, and would fly 50 times a year, rather than calling it two
> separate lies, we might more charitably call it two interrelated
errors.