What is the cost for one additional flight of SLS?
So if SLS does become available then could it launch DIVH class payloads?
Would this save any money by being able to retire DIVH sooner before Vulcan/ACES could replace it?
Quote from: RocketmanUS on 09/13/2015 08:21 pmWhat is the cost for one additional flight of SLS?Somewhere between $500 Million and $1 Billion. I believe Delta IVH is in the $300 Million range.
Quote from: RocketmanUS on 09/13/2015 08:21 pmSo if SLS does become available then could it launch DIVH class payloads?Oh it could definitely handle DIVH class payloads. It wouldn't be even close to the best use for SLS in my opinion but it could physically do it.
Closer to $400M for D-IVH
SLS can't do polar orbits
IMHO SLS should be dedicated to launching NASA payloads.
That avoids competition with the commercial sector...
...and frees up launches for deep space exploration (human and robotic).
Quote from: RocketmanUS on 09/13/2015 08:21 pmWhat is the cost for one additional flight of SLS?Somewhere between $500 Million and $1 Billion.
Quote...and frees up launches for deep space exploration (human and robotic).What's to free up? NASA already has the capability to build two SLS per year, and the cost to build two SLS-sized payloads per year would require a HUGE increase in NASA's development and operational budget. Assuming NASA doesn't get a budget bump, and assuming the ISS stays operational through 2024, NASA won't be able to afford even one launch per year.
I suspect that the quoted launch price for DIVH is not the incremental cost to the U.S. Government of procuring the vehicle. I imagine it includes a bunch of fixed costs. So that would be an apples-to-oranges comparison; the cost to the USG to procure an additional SLS flight given a running program with enough headroom to allow the launch might only be a few hundred million, but if I'm right the marginal cost of the Delta IV Heavy would be lower than that.So this comparison is only really useful if you're in a situation where your budget would take the full hit of the DIVH price but only the marginal cost of an SLS (it might be possible to get the SMD into such a situation, but the DoD probably isn't).
No, $1B is too high. Assuming the program exists and can handle the extra flight, an SLS launch by itself cannot reasonably be expected to add more than about $500M to the program's cost, probably below $400M, could be below $300M.
You're talking about the operations cost of existing technology, and not the part that depends strongly on flight rate either. Moreover, basically all of the changes that have the potential to significantly affect cost are cost-saving measures. The marginal cost of launching a Shuttle-derived LV is not going to balloon like the development cost of a cutting-edge space telescope.
The increase required would not be "HUGE", <snip>
Quote from: 93143 on 09/13/2015 09:36 pmNo, $1B is too high. Assuming the program exists and can handle the extra flight, an SLS launch by itself cannot reasonably be expected to add more than about $500M to the program's cost, probably below $400M, could be below $300M.I agree with you wholeheartedly that most SLS cost estimates are ridiculously overestimated. I was trying to give Rocketman a range of realistically imaginable costs.
The fact is that annual developmental costs of both SLS and Orion have been $1-2 Billion lower than the cost to run the space shuttle every year. That is a drastic improvement and for much more capability.
I've run the numbers several times. The whole SLS/Orion program (including things like hab modules and landers) is going to have lower costs than the shuttle program.
NASA was able to run shuttle concurrently with the construction and maintenance of ISS. Increases to the budget don't have to be extreme.
The cost of a launch system depends on who is doing the accounting. People in favor of a particular system tend to look at operational and marginal costs. Those opposed tend to throw in the cost of the development and what ever else. Thus it should be no surprise that the costs of a Shuttle mission has been quoted as from a few million to a billion dollars. SLS is no different.
The cost of flying one more Shuttle mission was quoted by Mike Griffin as about $300 million. That assumes that the operational costs for the year have been paid and there is extra production capacity.
SLS will be able to do 3 max a year with the current infrastructure.
The cost of the Delta IV Heavy is likely to be lower than people quote. EFT-1 cost $370 million not including the capsule but including the custom hardware such as the LES and boilerplate service module. That was a Delta IV procured commercially by the Orion program. While the pricing information is proprietary I'd bet that the cost is closer to $300 million than $400 million.
Quote from: notsorandom on 09/14/2015 02:23 pmThe cost of a launch system depends on who is doing the accounting. People in favor of a particular system tend to look at operational and marginal costs. Those opposed tend to throw in the cost of the development and what ever else. Thus it should be no surprise that the costs of a Shuttle mission has been quoted as from a few million to a billion dollars. SLS is no different.I look at the total cost, while also breaking out the development and operational portions. It's the only way to get a full up apples-to-apples cost, since "marginal cost" estimates are usually simplified too far and ignore large classes of costs like overhead.
QuoteThe cost of flying one more Shuttle mission was quoted by Mike Griffin as about $300 million. That assumes that the operational costs for the year have been paid and there is extra production capacity.Mike Griffin said a lot of things that were flat out wrong, and why make assumptions when facts exist?There are a number of articles that look at total cost of the Shuttle program, and dividing the number of flights flown yields the average total cost - which was about $1.5B. Some articles on the subject here:As Shuttle Program Ends, Final Price Tag Is Elusive - WSJ5 Horrifying Facts You Didn't Know About the Space Shuttle - ForbesNASA's Shuttle Program Cost $209 Billion Was it Worth It? - Space.comIt's worth noting that NASA agrees with these numbers now.
QuoteSLS will be able to do 3 max a year with the current infrastructure.There is an NSF thread where this is discussed. Bottom line is that as currently set up NASA can build slightly less than two per year, but with some additional money that can be increased to two per year. Lots more money would be needed to increase that rate beyond two.
QuoteThe cost of the Delta IV Heavy is likely to be lower than people quote. EFT-1 cost $370 million not including the capsule but including the custom hardware such as the LES and boilerplate service module. That was a Delta IV procured commercially by the Orion program. While the pricing information is proprietary I'd bet that the cost is closer to $300 million than $400 million.A number of years ago I was told (i.e. corrected) by Dr. Paul Spudis that a Delta IV Heavy cost $400M to NASA. He and I didn't see eye to eye on commercial launch costs in general (he is an SLS fan), but I believed him on that.
Regardless though, thinking that the SLS will cost approximately the same as a Delta IV Heavy (i.e. $300-400M range) doesn't seem to make sense. Delta IV Heavy is far more simple to manufacture, and it looks to be half the mass of the SLS.If you want to look at what SLS costs were estimated to be, here is one article to look at. Maybe it's very early in it's estimates, but that would provide a starting point for making corrections:The HLV Cost Information NASA Decided Not To Give To Congress - NASA Watch
Some things cost what they cost, and they are worth what they cost to the users. The Shuttle was that way, since Congress pretty much didn't care what the cost of each flight was - no one in Congress tracked it. And if we had unlimited funding the cost of the SLS wouldn't really matter much either, but when budgets are constrained it does become an important factor, especially when the cost of the SLS is not just the rocket, but the payloads and missions that are built specifically for it. You have to look at the opportunity cost.
The SLS can deliver these modules for free as they can go with the Orion on a crew flight to lunar space.
QuoteQuoteThe cost of the Delta IV Heavy is likely to be lower than people quote. EFT-1 cost $370 million not including the capsule but including the custom hardware such as the LES and boilerplate service module. That was a Delta IV procured commercially by the Orion program. While the pricing information is proprietary I'd bet that the cost is closer to $300 million than $400 million.A number of years ago I was told (i.e. corrected) by Dr. Paul Spudis that a Delta IV Heavy cost $400M to NASA. He and I didn't see eye to eye on commercial launch costs in general (he is an SLS fan), but I believed him on that.Did ULA give LM and the Orion program a $100 million discount on the price of a Delta IV heavy? Its an expensive rocket but its not $400 million, at least to launch a NASA payload like Orion.
Well that is kinda my point. You are not in favor of SLS so you chose the method which gives the highest per flight cost. The original poster asked a very specific question of what the marginal cost was. That is a useful thing to ask.
Once again we can used the Shuttle program as an example. There was debate about adding that final resupply mission. Going by your accounting method STS-135 cost $1.5 billion dollars. The extra money which needed to be added to the budget was nowhere near that. Marginal cost is a necessary thing to look at when planning out a manifest.
Solar Probe Plus is $389 million.
Quote from: notsorandom on 09/14/2015 05:17 pmWell that is kinda my point. You are not in favor of SLS so you chose the method which gives the highest per flight cost. The original poster asked a very specific question of what the marginal cost was. That is a useful thing to ask.Here is the challenge. When figuring out costs based on total spending, it's easy to see what the per unit cost is. Total cost divided by the number of flights. Simple math that everyone can understand.
Figuring out marginal cost though is not easy. I've done a lot of digging to figure out marginal costs for the Shuttle program, and though I'm pretty good at it (I've done this for work purposes too), I was never able to use public records to figure it out.Why? Because once the Shuttle became a sustaining program the pieces and parts that make up a Shuttle, and the contracts that were issued for work to be performed, never lined up. And even when they did, like when USA was formed to consolidate all Shuttle processing work, later amendments are either hard to find or hard to allocate to a specific Shuttle flight. So the best that can be said is that whatever marginal costs are calculated using publicly available documentation, they will under-represent the actual marginal cost - potentially by quite a bit. That can't happen when you're using total cost.
Now both total cost and marginal cost (where accurate) are useful for different reasons. Total cost doesn't make a lot of sense when you haven't flown anything, but it does show what the opportunity costs are that you're giving up. Marginal cost doesn't mean a lot if you don't remember how much it took to get to unit #1.For instance, theoretically you could spend $1Trillion over 50 years to build a system that lifts 250mT but only costs $10M/launch. However what was the opportunity cost for that? How much could you have lifted with current commercial launch vehicles with that $1Trillion? There are always tradeoffs...
QuoteOnce again we can used the Shuttle program as an example. There was debate about adding that final resupply mission. Going by your accounting method STS-135 cost $1.5 billion dollars. The extra money which needed to be added to the budget was nowhere near that. Marginal cost is a necessary thing to look at when planning out a manifest. Like all hardware programs, there were pieces and parts laying around that were mismatched purchases, so sure, the last flight could have been added without writing a check for $1.5B. But that's because the Shuttle program had over-bought, and there were pre-negoitated contracts that could be extended. And using end-of-life costing for a program just starting out doesn't make sense.Now take a look at the SLS program. There are no firm designs yet, since there are no customers and there are multiple configurations. So there is no possible way to accurately figure out "marginal cost" when you don't know what you are building and you are just starting to build your first unit. Boeing certainly doesn't know what their costs will be for units #1, 2 and 3, and neither does NASA.When I say no firm designs, I mean from a manufacturing standpoint. My specialty is in being the person that receives a customer order and sets up the entire manufacturing schedule for delivering the customer what they ordered. I've done this for government one-off products, and high volume commercial electronics, so I have a lot of experience. And as of today there are no customer order-able configurations for the SLS - and there wouldn't be, since the SLS is likely to be customized for every launch for quite a while. But what that means is figuring out "marginal cost" from outside the SLS Program Office is impossible, and even for them it will take a lot of work.