Re: Delta 4 Costs

On 22 Nov 2006 19:41:11 -0800, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
<edkyle99@xxxxxxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

NASA requested $4.0467 billion total for shuttle during FY2007, during
which time four space shuttle missions are planned ($1.0142 billion per
flight). That total included $1.7587 billion ($0.440 billion per
flight) for "hardware", which would presumably give some clue about
marginal costs. Based on this, my guess would be that shuttle fixed
costs are somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.3 billion per year.


You've lost me. If the $4.04B includes the $1.7B, how do you get to $2.3B?

I'm assuming that the $1.7B for "hardware" is roughly representative of
the variable, "marginal" costs, which leaves $2.3 billion in "fixed"
costs.

That assumption doesn't make much sense. The variable costs for a
Shuttle flight are, to first order, ET plus SRBs. Those can't be more
than half a billion total for four flights.
.

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