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OzOz · 10-14-2004, 01:43 AM

"the shuttle was never meant to be a production vehicle"

Actually, Shuttle *was* meant to be a production vehicle, with the original plan being for some fifty flights per year and a turn-around time of two weeks after each flight. These vehicles were meant to take over ALL of NASA's orbital launch requirements once they were up and running. NASA actually closed down the production lines for most American boosters by the mid-1980's. Shuttle was meant to provide cheap, reliable access to space, rendering the old expendable and expensive boosters unnecessary.

In fact, of course, it has done neither. While launch costs of around $50 million per flight were touted by NASA, this was only ever "achieved" with lots of creative accounting and government subsidies. The true cost is over ten times higher, and, with the turn-around time being on the order of months rather than days or weeks, the launch rate is now only about four flights per year (or rather, when it's flying it is). One thing that it appears that NASA "overlooked" in its first costing estimates was the biggest expense: people. It takes (or certainly did at one stage) about seventeen thousand signatures from ground crew to certify a vehicle to be ready for flight - EVERY time it flies! That is just the end of a lot of maintenance work. Imagine how much an overseas flight would cost if a 747 required a similar level of maintenance every time it touched down! As for reliability, Shuttle has had two extended stand-down periods following fatal incidents in which the vehicle and all aboard were lost. Hardly a shining example of reliability.

There was supposed to be a successor vehicle, the VentureStar, developed jointly by NASA and Lockheed Martin and selected for development in 1996. It was supposed to be 100% reusable. A smaller scale technology demonstration vehicle, the X-33, never reached flight status, after repeated problems with fabricating key components, such as the fuel tanks made from composite materials. The whole project was abandoned after the X-33 was cancelled.

10-14-2004, 01:43 AM	#9 (permalink)
OzOz Psycho Location: Right here, right now.	"the shuttle was never meant to be a production vehicle" Actually, Shuttle was meant to be a production vehicle, with the original plan being for some fifty flights per year and a turn-around time of two weeks after each flight. These vehicles were meant to take over ALL of NASA's orbital launch requirements once they were up and running. NASA actually closed down the production lines for most American boosters by the mid-1980's. Shuttle was meant to provide cheap, reliable access to space, rendering the old expendable and expensive boosters unnecessary. In fact, of course, it has done neither. While launch costs of around $50 million per flight were touted by NASA, this was only ever "achieved" with lots of creative accounting and government subsidies. The true cost is over ten times higher, and, with the turn-around time being on the order of months rather than days or weeks, the launch rate is now only about four flights per year (or rather, when it's flying it is). One thing that it appears that NASA "overlooked" in its first costing estimates was the biggest expense: people. It takes (or certainly did at one stage) about seventeen thousand signatures from ground crew to certify a vehicle to be ready for flight - EVERY time it flies! That is just the end of a lot of maintenance work. Imagine how much an overseas flight would cost if a 747 required a similar level of maintenance every time it touched down! As for reliability, Shuttle has had two extended stand-down periods following fatal incidents in which the vehicle and all aboard were lost. Hardly a shining example of reliability. There was supposed to be a successor vehicle, the VentureStar, developed jointly by NASA and Lockheed Martin and selected for development in 1996. It was supposed to be 100% reusable. A smaller scale technology demonstration vehicle, the X-33, never reached flight status, after repeated problems with fabricating key components, such as the fuel tanks made from composite materials. The whole project was abandoned after the X-33 was cancelled.