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posted by cmn32480 on Monday November 13 2017, @08:27PM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 1) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday November 14 2017, @04:09AM (2 children)

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2017, @04:09AM (#596657) Journal

    >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)

    by frojack (1554) on Tuesday November 14 2017, @06:59AM (#596696) Journal

    Yes, seriously. It would have been slightly less expensive to build new ones each time.

    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

      by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 15 2017, @02:22PM (#597280) Journal

      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.