🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ewright.724698268@convex.convex.com>, ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright) writes...
>In <BzDKw5.3no@news.cso.uiuc.edu> jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Josh 'K' Hopkins) writes:
> 
>>HE indulged in creative accounting?  I think the contract for DC-X was $58 
>>million, not a "couple hundred million."  
> 
>That sounds right.  McDAC has also spent some of its own money in
>addition to what it got from the Air Force.  I believe the contract
>required McDAC to spend at least an equal amount, so that puts it
>into the hundred-million-dollar range.  *Not* the billion-dollar
>range.
> 
> 
>>The average total cost of a shuttle mission is a little over $500 million 
>>not a billion+.
> 
>Only if you learned math from the "Hitchhiker's Guide."
> 
>Divide the amount of money NASA spends on the Space Shuttle program
>every year by six flights per year.
> 
>$500 million ain't even close.
> 

FLAMETHROWER ON

Hey stupid don't you read this group? The marginal cost for a Space Shuttle
mission is $37 million dollars maximum. This is the cost of fuel, ET and
operations directly chargeable to the mission.

For those who are further mentally deranged and who love to count more of 
the costs to the Shuttle program, the figure is $368 million dollars. This
includes the cost of the standing army at KSC and ranges around the world
and almost all charges to the program.  This rises to $405 million dollars
if you include the cost of the TDRSS program, the ASRM program, all shuttle
upgrades and modifications over the life of the program.

The flight rate by the way oh thou ignorant of basic math is 8 this year
with four flights scheduled in the first four months of next year. It is
beginning to be obvious that the flight rate of 8 per year is more of a
political than technical nature. If you were to account in this manner
the costs are even lower.

ONLY if you take every single budget item in the entire NASA budget that has
any relationship to manned space activities and then divide by the number
of flights per year, then you will get a >$500 million per flight costs.

These numbers come from the Space News article of Nov 29 December 8. Where
the heck do your numbers come from?

By the way, it is too bad Allen did not have the guts to respond to my
previous message relating these figures. I am flat sick and tired of people
simply ignoring any information that is detrimental to their little pet
project, no matter how valuable that project is in and of itself.

Dennis, University of Alabama in Huntsville