Baseline Space Shuttle Launch Costs

From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sun Feb 02 2003 - 18:54:28 MST


>From http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codea/codeae/documentc.html

C. NASA's Assumed Baseline Space Shuttle Launch Costs Through 2020
Applicable to the NASA Space Transportation Architecture Study

Annual budget of $2.4 billion remains flat
Nominal rate of 8 flights per year for the period 2004 -2020
$300 million per launch for the first 8 flights in any given year
$90 million per launch for flights 9 and 10 in any given year
Minimum safe launch rate is 5 flights per year
Maximum shuttle launch capacity is 10 flight per year

These are NASA's numbers.

See also http://www.faqs.org/faqs/space/controversy/ which claims a
higher per flight figure. I assume the $300 million figure includes all
costs, but I'm not certain here and government programs often make Enron
and Worldcom look like accounting saints when it comes to bookkeeping.

"Space Shuttle: NASA Must Reduce Costs Further to Operate Within Future
Projected Funds" at
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/report/gao/nsi95118.htm
tells us that "A June 1976 estimate placed the average cost of 572
flights at about $53 million each (in 1995 dollars).\2 In its fiscal
year 1995 budget to the Congress, NASA estimated the eight flights
planned for fiscal year 1995 would cost an average of $336 million each
(in 1995 dollars)."

Now the comparison that would need to be made here is how much does a
Saturn V (or other vehicle of similar size) launch cost. (Both the
Shuttle and Saturn V are already developed and paid for, so I'm only
interested in going forward costs. Granted, to start building Saturn Vs
again would require some expenditure to get production restarted.
That's another cost that would have to be figured in. I also assume
building more Shuttles would have similar costs, since none have been
churned out in well over a decade.)

Cheers!

Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/

    See "For a Free Frontier: The Case for Space Colonization" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/SpaceCol.html
    See "Space: The Forgotten Frontier" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/SpaceForgot.html
    See "A Late Answer to Bob Black" [on space commercialization] at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Black.html



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