Re: Here We Go Again!

simberg.interglobal@xxxxxxxxx (Rand Simberg) wrote:

:On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 08:43:27 -0400, in a place far, far away, "Jeff
:Findley" <jeff.findley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor
:glow in such a way as to indicate that:
:>
:>> :
:>> :No, that happened when the requirements (some of which were driven by
:>> :the Air Force) grew to exceed the available development funding.
:>> :
:>>
:>> You're being just slightly disingenuous here, don't you think? Just
:>> why did the Shuttle *have* any requirements driven by the Air Force,
:>> Rand?
:>
:>More than anything else, to gain political support for the program. With
:>the Air Force backing the project, it was far more likely that NASA would
:>get the funding it needed to actually build and fly the thing.
:
:Yes. It was the National Space Transportation System, and supposed to
:satisfy all launch requirements, both civil and military, so NASA had
:to consider DoD requirements when it designed it. (This programmatic
:approach, more than the design itself, was the most disastrous thing
:about the Shuttle, and NASA doesn't seem to have learned any lessons
:from it, because they did the same thing with VentureStar). The
:sixty-five foot payload bay and the thousand miles cross range were
:killers in terms of hugely increasing development costs, and making it
:impossible to meet its turnaround goals and operational costs. Money
:that could have gone toward these ends instead went to oversizing the
:vehicle.
:

Of course, it would have been even more disastrous for the Shuttle if
they hadn't pushed it as a USAF launch system, since without that
money that was budgeted into Shuttle would have gone to USAF to build
their own launcher, instead. That would have left too little money in
the NASA budget to build the thing even with the USAF requirements
removed.

In retrospect, this would probably have been better all around.
Something we're *still* trying to learn is that building big,
expensive 'do everything for everybody' systems is generally less
economically efficient than having everyone build their own. A
current examples of this is JSF (one airplane fits all). An
historical example was the F-111.

:
:>
:>It doesn't
:>mean that the Air Force spent its money actually developing the shuttle.
:>
:
:Nope. It didn't.
:

It does, however, mean that money that would have gone into the USAF
budget went into NASA's instead.


--
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
-- Charles Pinckney
.

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