Shuttle costs

Hello,
Being new to this group, I tried to retain a general feeling about the
topic at hand. An older thread, but being I work at the Kennedy Space
Center, I'd like to hopefully air my views.

It appears to me that the largest cost presently is not software, but
DOES have everything to do with hardware, fuels, maintenace, and
safety issues. A quick breakdown if I could:

Software: Software failures are few and far between. However, human
error causes the failures that have occured. I know that sounds
contradictory. If you realize that the private sector spends more to
lure the top percentile of software engineers and software developers,
it's not hard to figure that NASA, with its ever dwindling budget
cannot compete.

Hardware: Hardware is manufactured, recyled and developed. The man
hours involved with putting a shuttle stack together is probably not
that surprising to the masses, except that layoffs have put a strain
on work force. The end result being that technicians, engineers and
pad workers work overtime. To give you an example, a union worker at
KSC can and often do get tripletime pay on holidays if necessary work
has to be accomplished.

The same can be said for safety and maintenance issues as all these
processes are intertwined.

To make a long story shorter, increase in the budget, at KSC anyway
would in most likelyhood put some of these issues to rest.

To the moderator, thanks for creating this forum, as I enjoy a good
discussion.

Regards,

Rick Fischer
rfischer@...

Inside KSC Website
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--- In spacesettlers@y..., "Ed Minchau" wrote:
> --- In spacesettlers@y..., Al Globus wrote:
> >
> > Ryan Healey wrote:
> > >
> > > --- Ed Minchau wrote:
> > > >
> > > > The largest single cost of any of NASA's launches has nothing
> to do
> > > > with fuel or materials (although I agree with you Al, better
> > > > materials will drive launch costs down); fully half of the
cost
> of a
> > > > launch is...software.
> > >
> > > Is this a joke? don't they already re-use their software?
> >
> > This is incorrect. It probably comes from a speech by Goldin
where
> he
> > *projected* that up to half the cost of future space systems would
> be
> > software. That said, software costs are a large and rising
> fraction of
> > launch system costs and failures caused by software are
surprisingly
> > common (the second Sea Launch and one of the Ariane V failures
were