Author Topic: Reducing ISS expenditures via Commercial Crew and Cargo (Read 2727 times)

Khadgars · « **on:** 08/09/2013 08:02 pm »

This topic has been discussed in various other threads but thought it could use a dedicated one and please correct any inaccuracies.

We are currently spending $3 Billion per year on ISS operations with commercial crew and cargo development seed money coming from a separate pot.

By 2020, what are the possibilities that commercial crew and cargo could reduce ISS expenditures by a meaningful margin say from the current $3 Billion to $2.5 Billion or even $2 Billion? If ISS expenditures can be reduced by end of the decade, some of those funds can be moved into BLEO payload development. This is addition to SLS/Orion reduction of development cost could provide the funds needed for some DSH development.

wronkiew · « **Reply #1 on:** 08/09/2013 11:19 pm »

Honestly I have no idea where all that money is going. NASA is paying $55.8 million per seat for Soyuz. They launched four US astronauts last year, totalling $225 million. Cargo would have been about $1.6B/12*2 or $265 million. I heard they are pre-paying for Orbital flights, so maybe another $250 million there. That leaves about $2 billion for...what?

Looking at the budget documents, it looks like actually $221.1M was for research, and $1,434.6M was for "System Operations and Maintenance". I found a detailed description of that line item here:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/516652main_NASA_FY12_Budget_Estimates-Space_Operations.pdf

All of the activities covered by "System Operations and Maintenance" sound vital, but I can't imagine how they manage to spend $1.4B per year doing it.

The short answer is, no, there is not enough money in crew & cargo resupply that any reduction would make a difference for BEO exploration.

pathfinder_01 · « **Reply #2 on:** 08/10/2013 01:52 am »

Ground support and operations probably is where all the money goes. We haven't quite gotten to the Deep Space Nine type station that pretty much is totally run by it's onboard crew.

zaitcev · « **Reply #3 on:** 08/12/2013 08:24 pm »

It was eye-opening for me to read the instructions that ground provides to astronauts to complete any and every kind of simple task. It came to my attention with the toothbrush tool, but basically they fart according to a 3-page manual. Dig into those, and the myopic transport-centered view is going to fall apart at once.

In addition, controllers operate lots of systems remotely and I would not be surprised if they carried out 80% of onboard tasks. So we have thousands in the crew and they all receive salaries.

dsmillman · « **Reply #4 on:** 08/13/2013 08:29 am »

While the Space Shuttle was flying, many of the fixed costs such as the JSC Mission Operations Directorate were being charged to the Shuttle budget. Now they have to be charged to the ISS budget.