Space Forum / Shuttle / December 2007

Well 'in the ballpark'.

You can furlough for say a year or so.  But for one thing you risk losing
trained people to other jobs.  Generally not a good thing, especially for an
aging system.

But if you're flying 2-3 times a year, you basically need to keep them on
the payroll fulltime, even if they're only working 1/2 the time.

They're fairly down in the noise.  Last time I looked (which was about 5-6
years ago) I think the best estimate for incremental costs for a shuttle
flight were about $150 million.  (That included an ET at about $85 million I
think, SRB refurbishment and everything else.).

With the newer SLWT that cost went up to I think about $115 million/tank.

Surprisingly, if you look at just the incremental costs for the shuttle, it
wasn't actually that bad of a bargain.  But, the fixed costs were huge.  And
unfortunately, it appears that Ares (in my opinion) won't do much better in
that area.

High fixed costs aren't a problem if you have a high flight rate to match
it.  I've used the example of JFK airport in the past.  Fixed costs are
huge, but at a couple hundred flights a day, they're affordable.  If they
were "launching" a single 747-400 a day to Europe, no one could afford to
fly.

So really, if you're going to fly the shuttle, you're almost better off
flying more missions rather than fewer.  Your costs go up in a sublinear
fashion.

For example, assume fixed costs of $4 billion a year and incremental costs
of $250 million/flight.

Keeping the shuttle flying for 2 flights a year... $4.5 billion. or $2.25
billion/flight.

Fly it 4 times (which means 2 orbiters twice a year, very managable), you're
up to $5 billion already down to $1.25 billion/flight.

9 times a year...you're down to about $700 million/flight.

With the currnet workforce, parts, etc.  You're probably going to be able to
do 6 flights/year max.

So, what would *I* do?

Keep the shuttle, ditch Ares/Orion.

Fly 2 flights a year to ISS (MPLM flights).

And then use the other 4 flights a year I could get to assemble a lunar
lander (might need to fly fuel up on say an Atlas V just to time things
right).

Or other missions of opportunity.

I'll bet at least through 2020 or so it'll be cheaper and accomplish more
than Orion/Ares will.

By 2020, let the commercial segment take over almost all your work.