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from the spending-these-dollars-makes-sense dept.
In-depth study: Commercial cargo program a bargain for NASA
It has generally been assumed that NASA will save money by spurring the development of services by US companies to supply the International Space Station, but such conclusions have largely been based on estimates. Now, a rigorous new review authored by a NASA analyst, and published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, offers a clear answer to this question.
According to the new research paper by Edgar Zapata, who works at Kennedy Space Center, the supply services offered by SpaceX and Orbital ATK have cost NASA two to three times less than if the space agency had continued to fly the space shuttle. For his analysis, Zapata attempted to make an "apples to apples" comparison between the commercial vehicles, through June 2017, and the space shuttle.
Specifically, the analysis of development and operational expenses, as well as vehicle failures, found that SpaceX had cost NASA about $89,000 per kg of cargo delivered to the space station. By the same methodology, he found Orbital ATK had cost $135,000 per kg. Had the shuttle continued to fly, and deliver cargo via its Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, it would have cost $272,000 per kg.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Monday November 13 2017, @09:50PM (4 children)
Because they found it really wasn't reusable. Once it lands in the ocean the serviceability is just about all gone. It requires a total rewire, and the internal heat damage was way worse than expected. It had no shutdown and restart capability, it couldn't return to the pad.
https://www.quora.com/Space-Shuttle-How-much-money-was-saved-by-reusing-the-Solid-Rocket-Boosters-SRBs-instead-of-making-them-disposable [quora.com]
The odd part is they continued to parachute them down and recover them. Why?
They were tried as launch vehicles for Ares. (once).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_I-X [wikipedia.org]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 13 2017, @10:11PM
[x] Because there are no consequences for wasting taxpayer money
[x] Think of the Children -- what if this were to land on someone's head (in some alternate reality)
[_] To study them
[x] Because we don't want a bunch of them at the bottom of the ocean
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday November 14 2017, @04:09AM (2 children)
>The odd part is they continued to parachute them down and recover them. Why?
Because it was sold to Congress as a reusable system, and there would have been hell to pay if they threw them away instead of reusing them.
Yes, seriously. It would have been slightly less expensive to build new ones each time.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday November 14 2017, @06:59AM (1 child)
They did build new ones.
None of them were re-flown as far as I could tell.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday November 15 2017, @02:22PM
They weren't reflown, that's true, but they were reused. After they splashd down divers attached a cap to them and pumped out all of the seawater in them. Then they were towed back to port and shipped to the factory. Back at the factory each one of the SRBs segments, were separated, disassembled, cleaned, repaired, and put on a shelf for building a future SRB. The final shuttle flight’s SRBs included 5,000 reused parts from 59 previous missions.
http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts135/fdf/135srbs.pdf [spaceflightnow.com] talks more about this, but unfortunately not in any depth.