If the U.S. were to have made a new, state of the art, vehicle for every launch instead of a reuseable shuttle, how much more would that have cost?
You mean, “How much less?”
No. Building a new vehicle each time would cost more money. Would it not?
Not necessarily. A one-use vehicle most likely wouldn’t have the expensive and fragile tiles that the current one has, and would have an heat shield that is consumed or otherwise destroyed in one use. Other systems may not need to be built as robustly either.
Would that still be less than spreading the added cost to make a reusable vehicle over the number of times it’s used?
If a reusable vehicle is used only a few times, it might have been cheaper to build “disposable” vehicles. However, the original vision 30 or so years ago was for many frequent flights, to the point it would be as exciting as hopping on a plane for a business trip, hence the design decision to be reusable.
The idea for the shuttle was to make a “space plane” that could land and refuel and take off again, just like an airline. Unfortunately, the technology really wasn’t there yet (and still isn’t). Due to mostly political reasons, the shuttle continued on the space plane path despite the fact that it became apparent that it would cost more overall to make this “reusable” space craft than it would cost to make disposable vehicles to do the same thing.
The space shuttle has HUGE maintenance costs. After every mission, each shuttle goes through a very expensive maintenance program where many parts of the shuttle are completely taken apart and rebuilt. They don’t just polish off the dirt, refuel it, and stick it back on the pad. The end result is that it costs more to launch the shuttle than it does to launch disposable rockets to do the same thing.
NASA has been looking at retiring the space shuttle for some time. There was a lot of investigation into single stage to orbit (SSTO) vehicles, and it looked for a while like they wanted to replace the shuttle with a true space plane. Rather than repeat the mistakes of the previous decades, when it became apparent that the technology still isn’t there for a space plane, they abandoned the SSTO and ended up with the “old” technology of non-reusable rockets and capsules.
Wikipedia’s article on the X33, which was NASA’s SSTO attempt:
Wikipedia’s artile on the Orion, which will replace the shuttle in 2010:
For cost analysis purposes, the total price tag of the Apollo Program was $135 billion in 2006 dollars ($25.4 billion unadjusted). Cite. With 14 flights plus the Apollo Soyuz Test Project, plus the Skylab shot that used the Saturn V, you can say that it cost just shy of $8 billion inflation-adjusted dollars per shot in development costs.
Compare that to the Shuttle program: 117 flights. Total cost-to-date of the program:$145 billion, estimated $174 billion by 2010. Cite. I think you can see that in spite of the different goals, the Space Shuttle has been far less expensive per launch, and due to the fact that it was a multi-purpose platform rather than a focused, single-purpose platform like the Apollo program was it has been to my mind more effective.
Of course, the Shuttle turned out to be much more complex and difficult than previously envisioned, so in that respect it could be considered a “flop”, plus there is the 14-3 death totals for the program, and what value do you place on that?
Whatever we replace it with, it will probably be more expensive than what we have now. But how much? I have no idea.
Note: The concept for the Orion CEV capsule IS having it be reusable, only with a limited lifespan. Which could have been feasible at the same time as the STS was being introduced, but by then they were committed to the STS.
As to the initial question, IMO it would be hard to determine relative net avoided cost in the introduction of the STS as opposed to, say, having gone for a series of generationally upgraded Apollo/Saturn derivatives, specifically in the manned-flight area. Continuing with generational improvements of the LEO Apollo/Saturn-IB vehicles in the manner the Soviet/Russians continued with generational editions of the Soyuz would have spread the development cost along a longer time period. But it is hard to know how well, as the run of Apollo/Saturn-derived systems was decreed to end, period, once the mission was accomplished. Plus there is the issue as to what missions would have been undertaken with those capabilities.
Part of the problem is also that in the absence of a “Big Picture” marquee mission for the Shuttle fleet, vs. Apollo, the lower real cost-per-mission or cost-per-astronaut-space-hour of the STS manned flights is lost in the public’s perception of lack of a huge, headline-grabbing, knock-your-socks-off triumph. The STS turned out to be perceived as something of a money pit, partly due to “pitching” it as that it would be used for what you could not and didn’t need to – it was politically hyped as a way to achieve “reliable, routine” spaceflight, and it really was not and could not have been. It was partially pitched as a reliable satellite-launch system and THAT part did not work out.
For what you really can get the most out of a system like the STS Shuttles, is for pioneering projects and for missions that require sending up a work crew with supplies for delivery and retrieval that need to be manhandled: the most obvious being if you’re serious about building a Space Station. OTOH it’s hard to claim it’s not overkill for pushing out mere comm satellites, and as for tending limited orbital experiment platforms, well the people know the Russians did for over 20 years with expendables and modulars.
I suppose that were money no object, the sensible thing would be to have a large, complex, kick-all-techno-butt, payday-mission multipurpose vehicle AND a *smaller * flexible, on-the-spot, multipurpose vehicle AND a cheap-but-near-foolproof up-n-down ferry transport to which you can plug mission-specific modular add-ons. But the Appropriations Committee says you can only have one.
The expensiveness of the Saturn rockets is partially because after spending so much to develop them, we launched a handful and then threw the plans away. By the time the Apollo program was concluded I’m certain that the marginal cost of keeping Saturn production and launch capability would have been a fraction of what’s been spent on the Shuttle.
As was said upthread, calling the Shuttle “resusable” is a joke.
I’m not sure that this is an apples-to-apples comparison, as it is much harder to do the moon thing than to lift cargo into low earth orbit. A better basis for comparison would probably be costs of mercury or gemini missions for the manned missions or the various unmanned platforms for satellite launches - or even a combination for those odd times when you need to immediately service the satellite you are launching.
The shuttle is expensive, and largely rebuilt for each mission. I like it, and don’t doubt that because of its existence we have done things in space that we would not have otherwise done, because to a certain extent it has been a platform in search of a mission. I don’t think it is cheaper than it’s alternatives.
How about comparing the Shuttle to the Soyuz rockets that are used to get people and cargo up and down from the ISS.
We have lots of good comparisons, and no, the Shuttle isn’t particularly inexpensive. In fact, it’s the most expensive heavy lift spacecraft there is.
From this cite we can see the 2002 numbers for cost per pound of payload lifted into low earth orbit:
Space Shuttle: $4729
Ariane 5G: $4152
Zenit 3SL: $2431
Long March 3B: $2003
Proton: $1953
Zenit 2: $1404
Those are the flying ‘heavy lift’ spacecraft that can lift payloads in the same size range as the Shuttle. The Shuttle is more expensive for many reasons. One is that each launch is more expensive because it’s a man-rated vehicle with a large crew. Another is that it hauls its wings and landing gear into orbit with it, and this requires much more fuel. It’s much more complex than other space launchers, and requires huge amounts of work between flights.
This is why the kinds of payloads that get flown on the shuttle typically fall into two categories - those that require human assistance (hubble repair missions, ISS installations, special experiments, etc), or payloads that are either too big or too heavy to fly any other way - the shuttle’s payload bay is much bigger than the payload size of any other lifter, and it can haul significantly more payload into orbit than any other current lifter.
Sam, I don’t think that link means what you think it means … been doing so research on the C-20 lately?
In any case I imagine those costs are the charges per pound, not the costs per pound; China and Russia in particular are likely to be charging under cost to get currency coming in.
Part of the problem with the Shuttle, and which (I understand) NASA is planning to fix in the next generation of vehicles, is that it was designed as a one-size-fits-all device. Need to send a crew up to the Space Station? Send a shuttle. Need to launch a big, bulky mission like the Hubble? Send the Shuttle. Except in the first case, you’re launching a big, bulky cargo bay that you don’t need, and in the second case, you’re launching crew space and life support for seven that you don’t need. A much better plan would be to have two separate vehicles, one for unmanned cargo, and one for personnel. If you need to launch people, use the people-launcher, and if you need to launch a big load, use the cargo-launcher. On the rare occasions where you need to do both, use one of each. As an added bonus, since the cargo-launcher is unmanned, it doesn’t need to be man-rated. If one unmanned launch out of 50 fails catastrophically, well, that’s the cost of doing business. But if one manned launch out of 50 fails catastrophically, as experience tells us, it’s a national tragedy. So you invest heavily in the safety of the manned vehicle (which might still cost less than the safety features on the Shuttle, since it’s smaller and simpler), but you don’t worry too much about it on the unmanned vehicle, and hence save money.
In a couple of generations, say if Cochrane does build his warp ship etc., when reviewing the path of the US space program the Shuttle will be seen as this odd little blip where the program went off in some silly, illogical direction for 20-30 years. Two of them blew up, and eventually the space program reached a complete technological dead end with them. Then it came to its senses and got back on track with an updated continuation of the Apollo heavy lift program (which is exactly what the Orion program is).
Oops. The C-20 link was for another discussion.
Chronos: Exactly. Flying into space is all about optimization. Fly the smallest, cheapest, simplest vehicle you can that can possibly get the job done. The Shuttle was a generalized vehicle, which was the wrong way to go for a space launcher. You wind up carrying far too much redundant or unnecessary mass into space with each launch.
Taking the OP’s “a new, state of the art, vehicle for every launch” literally, that certainly wouldn’t be cheap, as so much of the cost is in the design work. If you had a redesign for every mission, or even every year, those costs would skyrocket (it’s not just the design per se, but retesting, certifying, training, etc).
I’ve worked around the STS pre- and post-launch processing and unmanned (Delta, Atlas, and others) processing/prep, and even to the casual observer there is a heckuva lot more that goes in to the STS portions. And not simply because they’re manned; because of the “reuse” design. A good example is the retrieval and reprocessing of the solid rocket boosters. I don’t know what the success is lately, but early on - after all the expense of recovery and decontamination - very few segments could be reused anyway.
Historically, for payloads that fit, Delta has been extremely reliable and relatively cheap. I’d like to know the cost/pound of payload for a Delta or Atlas-lifted load vs. the STS.
There’s no comparison. While we don’t have access to the actual costs, the consensus is that they’re somewhere in the area of $20M per launch. That’s right; twenty million dollars per launch, far less than it costs to launch a Delta EELV or Atlas V. They do this by using tried-and-true–though not terribly efficient or cutting edge–technology, a continuous production line, and a significant lack of concern about environmental impact or debris path due to failure mode. (Remember how the Shuttle takes off at Canaveral but used to land at Edwards, requiring an expensive ferrying operation to get it back to Florida?) That’s so in the case of abort or catastrophic failure the STS isn’t overland.
Still, it’s an apples to oranges comparison; the Soyez isn’t anywhere near as capable either in duration or payload (human or provisions), nor can it perform the missions that the Shuttle can. Similarly, the Shuttle can’t do what Apollo did–namely, go to the Moon–so it’s also not an even comparison. As Sam Stone quantifies, as a heavy lift vehicle–which was supposed to be the Shuttle’s métier, to the point that other heavy lift booster development programs were cancelled by Congress and the Air Force to increase work for the then-assumed much cheaper Shuttle to do, prior to the failure of Challenger–the STS is incomperably more expensive. (In fairness, it should be noted that none of the other vehicles he lists are man-rated and all have had launch failure rates significantly greater than that of the Shuttle.) Also, as already noted, comparing overall program costs between Apollo and STS is unfair, as Apollo’s much shorter duration and fewer missions gives less space time to amortize development costs over. Plus, Apollo was seriously cutting edge, at the very boundries of what could be done with then extant technology, to which the Shuttle owes a significant amount, including the original GN&C computers (IBM AP-101).
So, there are no direct cost comparisons to make. How do we establish whether the STS was a good value or not? Well, compared to original estimates of launch costs for the final design concept (and unfortunately I don’t have Space Shuttle: The History of the National Space Transportation System The First 100 Missions here at home, but I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the development of the STS) actual operating costs–pounds to orbit–are somewhere between 500% and 2000%, depending on whose number you use and what you count. So, even if it was a bargin, it wasn’t the bargin we thought we were buying.
On the other hand, it was a significant bargin in terms of initial development cost as compared to the Soviet Buran space shuttle, and this can be considered a direct competitor in terms of capability and mission. This, too, may be an unfair comparison; the Soviets did substantially more testing on Buran than we did on the STS, and were generally more reserved about taking chances and winging it. Buran (the lead ship in the class, and only one fully completed) only flew once, and then on an unmanned up-and-around test flight, so operational costs are truely unknown.
In the end, the costs of the Shuttle are actually kind of immaterial on the basis of a cost-benefits breakdown; the original objectives for the STS were heavy boost cargo, polar orbit military use (deployment of satellites and possible space-based weapons), support the construction of then Space Station Alpha (later repeatedly downscaled, cancelled by Clinton, and then revived as the ISS), repair and return of damaged satellites in space, and general space-y-science-y-fly-around-in-freefall type stuff. The Shuttle has only performed three of those objectives to any degree of satisfaction, and given the extended turnaround times, low mission frequency, and hiatus and subsequent scale back post Challenger it’s hard to say whether the ever Shuttle could have, all things being equal, performed to anything like what was promised. Lacking a cohesive overall purpose, you can’t really measure whether the Shuttle did the job well or poorly.
Could we have done the same thing more cheaply with another concept, single use or not? Second guessing is kind of a fool’s game because you can always see the mistakes and missed opportunities in hindsight, and going with a radically different concept like the Chrysler SERV may have had its own problems and setbacks (a 12 module aerospike engine? That’s some crazy out-there tech). Still, in hindsight, it’s easy to see that the promises of Shuttle performance were absurdly optimistic and the engineering challenges (particularly in the thermal protection system) of a winged reusable shuttle were daunting. Nonetheless, the Shuttle development program actually came in comfortably under the original budget allocation and almost (except for those damned tiles) on time. So to be fair, it falls somewhere between a credible success and abysmal failure.
Can we do it cheaper now? Perhaps, but I’m not terribly optimistic about the stated costs for CEV, which started out as ATK’s Safe, Simple, Soon concept and has turned into a massive development program…to use extant, off-the-shelf technology. WTF? And CEV should be a stepping stone, a way of keeping us in space while we go off to develop the next generation of ground-to-orbit systems, orbital tugs, interplanetary vessels, and the necessary propulsion and environment technology to sustain them. Instead, CEV is being promised as a Swiss Army Knife system that’ll take you anywhere form LEO to Mars with just a simple changeout of mission modules. Hmm…where have we heard these promises before?
Stranger
Okay, first of all…dude, what the heck are you talking about?
And second, CEV can hardly be considered an Apollo heavy lift; it’s actually considerably less capable than the conceptualized Apollo Plus system (which would have essentially doubled the size and capacity of the Saturn V, plus possibly added a steam-fission third stage or transorbit stage for interplanetary propulsion). There is no way this thing is ever leaving the Earth-Moon system, even assuming multiple launches and orbital integration. CEV is a stopgap, using tried technology to keep is Low Earth Orbit and (perhaps) zip back to the Moon just to make sure the flag is still standing, but it’s not on the track to anywhere beyond Lunar orbit.
Stranger
Others in this thread have given good answers to the OP, but I just wanted to say that you’ve truly brought in a bunch of good information and presented it very well. Nice job, dude. It’s always a pleasure to read your posts.
I admit that I didn’t look* too* closely at the SERV, but the aerospike concept is, what? 40 years old? The sheer size of the SERV engine is spectacular (diameter of 26 meters and 5.39 million lbs thrust?)
Oh, I see. Back in 1971 when they drew up the SERV concept, that was some far-out stuff. My bad, sorry. Reading comprehension is on my list of things to read about :smack: