Re: Scrapping of Saturn-V

(maury.markowitz@xxxxxxxxx) writes:
My posts seem to be disappearing, so I'll do this one again in short
form...

The shuttle price includes fixed costs like operating KSC: I believe
the variable cost per flight is more like $200 million. I think the
Saturn V $2 billion cost is purely variable costs per launch including
amortised development, but I'm not certain of that. If, so the shuttle
is maybe a tenth of the cost per flight.

Unfair comparison. You're adding in development for the Saturn V, but
not the Shuttle.

The Shuttle's R7D costs are mostly 25-35 years in the last. At the
time of the issue of shutting down the S V line, it's R7D costs
were still current ones.

Let's follow that logic for a moment...

Current cost estimates place the Shuttle program as a whole at 145
billion through 2005. The analagous Saturn development, which appears
to include both the Saturn I/IB and Saturn V is 7.439 billion in 1966
average dollars (according to wade's). Adjusting that for inflation it
is about 43 billion, less than a third of the Shuttle.

The Shuttle has flown 114 missions, so that's 1.27 billion per flight.
The Saturn series launched 13 V's, 9 IB's and 10 I's, so that's 1.34
billion per flight. Furthermore that price includes several
flight-ready boosters that did not fly, so the per-vehicle costs lower
that somewhat if one assumes the cost to launch is less than the cost
to build (which seems semi-likely I guess).

Yet, pretty much all the Shuttle fights did useful work, outside of
testing, while only 3 Saturn 1s did some such work. With Saturn 1B,
only one did a manned test, and only four more did useful ferrying
work. And, while most of the S Vs did operational flights, that
was due to the time pressure, and would likely not be repeated,
absent that pressure.

What does confuse the issue is that Wade's also quotes a 431 million
launch price, but it is not clear whether or not that includes the
development. Assuming it does NOT include this, which seems reasonable
given that the cost is lower than 7.439 billion / 15 vehicles, then the
Saturn would cost about double the Shuttle.

And, with the Shuttle being phased out with one reason being it's
high cost, its not logical to say that a vehicle with *twice* the
cost, that doesn't offer the payload return to Earth that the Shuttle
does, would be funded.

Now, if one had a specific mission that demanded 100 tons to LEO,
that could not be met any other way, then perhaps...

Andre

.

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