Re: Space Access Update #112 9/19/05
- From: simberg.interglobal@xxxxxxxxx (Rand Simberg)
- Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 05:38:32 GMT
On Mon, 03 Oct 2005 22:01:38 -0400, in a place far, far away, Josh
Hill <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:
>On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 04:14:51 GMT, simberg.interglobal@xxxxxxxxx (Rand
>Simberg) wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 03 Oct 2005 20:49:59 -0400, in a place far, far away, Josh
>>Hill <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
>>such a way as to indicate that:
>>
>>
>>>Developing the HLV, $5-$10 billion. Cost per flight, about $250
>>>million, assuming they launch the CEV on the HLV. Savings, $350
>>>million per moon mission, over $1 billion per Mars mission based on
>>>flight costs alone. Whether the economics work out favorably or not
>>>depends on the total number of missions.
>>
>>Which NASA concedes is low (which almost certainly means too low to
>>amortize the development), so I'm not sure what your point is.
>
>Four moon missions, savings of $1.4 billion. Two Mars missions of
>three launches without sequential redundancy, 6 launches or $2.1
>billion. Total, $3.5 billion out of a $5-10 billion development
>program. Add to that the extra costs of research, design, and trials
>for orbital assembly and refueling, and consider other possible uses
>for an HLV. The savings aren't exactly compelling.
Unless one considers the value of actually developing the
infrastructure needed to become a spacefaring civilization.
In which case they seem invaluable to people who are interested in
more than Apollo on steroids.
>>>I don't see any savings here that would justify the added risks and
>>>costs of orbital assembly and fueling. The trick, when going to the
>>>moon and, in particular, Mars, is to get there and back at all, and on
>>>the scale of these projects -- over $100 billion to go to the moon,
>>>more to go to Mars -- saving a few percent at the price of reliability
>>>would IMO be penny wise and pound foolish.
>>
>>You see zero benefit to learning how to do orbital operations and
>>refueling? None worth the small fraction of that hundred billions
>>that it would cost?
>
>I think we've had a fair amount of experience with orbital assembly.
Not really.
>Orbital refueling seems to me something that can and should be tried
>if we ever have a good reason to do so, e.g., we decide to build a
>dedicated moon shuttle.
A good reason to do so would be to dramatically reduce the marginal
cost of mounting lunar and Mars missions. But that doesn't seem to be
on either your or NASA's agenda.
.
- References:
- Re: Space Access Update #112 9/19/05
- From: Jonathan Goff
- Re: Space Access Update #112 9/19/05
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