Author Topic: Cost comparison in todays dollars STS vs. Saturn V  (Read 81014 times)

Offline luke strawwalker

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Re: Cost comparison in todays dollars STS vs. Saturn V
« Reply #80 on: 11/03/2012 01:25 am »
The thing that's SO sad about Saturn V and IB is that basically production was stopped as soon as the capability existed... such a tiny number of vehicles were built and flown (or remained unflown as the museum pieces in Texas, Alabama, and Florida attest) that of COURSE costs on per-vehicle, per mission basis were enormous.  If we had flown 135 Saturn V's or Saturn IB's, the costs would have quite probably been at the very least competitive with Shuttle, if not less than Shuttle.  If a decent yet modest cost program had been implemented to streamline production and reduce costs, simplifying the production of F-1's and the vehicles structures, and applied economies of scale, I think Saturn would have been very cost competitive with shuttle on a per launch basis, and they would have blown shuttle out of the water when it comes to payload performance. 

Of course, payloads for 135 Saturn V's isn't going to happen, but if you look at the Saturn IB, lofting a station logistics and crew vehicle of whatever type (either a simplified Apollo follow on, Big G type vehicle, or a lifting body or shuttle type gliding vehicle (much smaller and easier to maintain, refurbish, and turn around between launches), between the two we could probably have had a series of small space stations (Skylab and similar follow-ons) and a large ISS type space station eventually (constructed Mir-like from a handful of large modules rather than from multiple smaller modules lofted on dozens of shuttle launches), and dozens upon dozens of logistics and crew transfer flights.  All that, and preserve the deep space capabilities of an HLV as well, for when/if the desire to do deep space exploration came around again...

All that development time, effort, and money that was poured into Apollo and the Saturn rockets was thrown away JUST when it was starting to come into its own... It'd be similar to spending nearly a hundred million bucks to design, test, and develop an all new sports car, create tooling, build factories, engine and transmission plants, and create a massive assembly line to produce the cars, and then build a few dozen cars before scrapping the whole operation and starting over from scratch... That's basically what happened.  SO, OF COURSE those cars would end up costing over a hundred thousand a piece... BUT, if you mass produce them, you can get the unit price down to a price point that is affordable enough to stimulate sales and still make a profit.  Saturn was canceled at JUST the point where it would have STARTED to get some economies of scale... the development was already paid for... the costs of the infrastructure and the production capacity, the research and development to produce functional and safe engines and components had been done... the main thing was to get the cost down through simplification and streamlining (like say of F-1 production) and getting some economies of scale through actual use. 

SO, based on what has become known to be either extremely optimistic estimates or downright deliberate ignoring of the realities of launch needs, payloads, and costs of shuttle development and operation, through a twisting and turning of compromises and overblown promises and disregarding "inconvenient facts" and making overly optimistic projections, we ended up with the shuttle we've just retired after 30 years.  One that had basically no chance of ever meeting the expectation for it from day one.  It wasn't by accident, but by a series of deliberately made choices and compromises, that seemed perfectly logical at the time, yet had "unforeseen" consequences that impacted the entire system and made it incapable of meeting the expectations set for it... and the same sort of decision making process led directly to the loss of both the Challenger and Columbia. 

THIS is the exact sort of thing we need to avoid going forward.  Unrealistic numbers and assumptions have been used in everthing from ESAS, to Ares I safety numbers, to Constellation costs, and now with SLS... If we're going to produce a vehicle that will have a chance to be any more cost-efficient or capable as the shuttle or Saturns, then we have to HONESTLY assess the costs, the flight rates, and the missions and their requirements.  So far, SLS seems to be suffering from a definite fuzziness of what exactly the mission will be, let alone the requirements actually needed to accomplish it. 

I guess time will tell... it certainly has about the Saturn and the shuttle...

Later!  OL JR :)
NO plan IS the plan...

"His plan had no goals, no timeline, and no budgetary guidelines. Just maybe's, pretty speeches, and smokescreens."

Offline MattJL

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Re: Cost comparison in todays dollars STS vs. Saturn V
« Reply #81 on: 11/09/2012 09:48 pm »
I'm fairly certain that a good number of people have read this already, but I think it's worth a mention.

http://www.astronautix.com/articles/arosaway.htm

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