We're just delaying the gap aren't we? It's danergous to assume the shuttle is now safe, it's still more dangerous than Ares/Orion is proposing to be.
Quote from: AresWatcher on 07/22/2008 03:50 amWe're just delaying the gap aren't we? It's danergous to assume the shuttle is now safe, it's still more dangerous than Ares/Orion is proposing to be.Who's assuming the shuttle is safe? I don't think anyone is. Of course, no spacecraft is, in any objective sense. Broadly speaking, there are two classes of manned spacecraft: those with a 1 in roughly-60 fatality rate, and those that never flew enough to even demonstrate a 1 in roughly-60 fatality rate.Ares/Orion may propose whatever numbers they wish, but Orion would have to complete its first 62 manned flights without a fatality to demonstrate a better fatality rate than the shuttle. The odds of that are quite low, for a variety of reasons.Nor will the risk associated with flying the shuttle sharply increase after 2010. If the risk increases at all, it will do so gradually. There was nothing special about the date 2010 when the CAIB wrote R9.2-1, and there was nothing special about the administration adopting that date for shuttle retirement, other than being able to make a public show of accepting the CAIB recommendations as program requirements.The valid reason to retire the shuttle is that its high costs of operations "sucks all the air out of the room" for funding development of replacement vehicles.
CxP already gets $ 2.5 billion/year, now, with Shuttle still flying. Saying it "sucks all the air out of the room" is not correct. This is why the "you just delay the gap" talk is a myth. $ 2.5 billion/year are $ 20 billion in 8 years, this should be enough to fly Orion to LEO (development and later operations).
Pro: Ensures completion of the manifest (with CLFs) and potential of AMS (STS-134). (Note: At present, they can do everything bar 134 by May 2010).
Quote from: Chris Bergin on 07/22/2008 03:26 amPro: Ensures completion of the manifest (with CLFs) and potential of AMS (STS-134). (Note: At present, they can do everything bar 134 by May 2010).Question: does this assume keeping tank production open or just stretching the existing manifest so that shuttles fly in 2011 and 2012?
On the question of extending. If they stretch to 2012, it's about 8 billion whatever, right? You can launch one mission in a year, or six, it's still about the same baseline costs? (I remember reading here that the "It costs about a billion a launch" isn't correct)?