🚀 go-pugleaf

>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.

   I don't think the Congress convened and said "NASA can't fly more
   than eight missions per year". Actually, the eight-per-year (seven
   on the slate for '94) is more of a 'let's not press our luck'
   decision than a 'can we justify more than eight a year' decision.
   NASA occassionally cites fuel costs as being involved, but that's
   hooey, IMHO. I think they are staring down that long dark one-
   failure-in-25-flights statistic and thinking 'let's not push
   the flight rate any more than we have to.' Wise decision, I'd say.
   If you ask me, they should fly Shuttle sparingly until Freedom is
   ready to launch, and then accelerate to 12 flights per year. 
   That's one per month, a track record that they've demonstrated
   several times in the past few years, and are about to again, as you
   noted, from December '92 to April '93 (with only 3 Orbiters, BTW.)
   
>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.

>Dennis, University of Alabama in Huntsville

   It basically comes down to a point of what one considers
   operational costs and what one considers related costs. On the
   operational side, counting Launch Control, OPF engineers, and
   fuel costs, Shuttle is still the most expensive. Of course, nothing
   else has to launch human beings, so comparisons are very tricky.
   On the related costs side of the budget, with the exception of the
   DC Revolution endlessly touted here on the net, new launch systems
   will still need major launch facilities (and standing armies), big
   computerized Mission Control Centers, and numerous contractors. These
   things are counted in Shuttle budgets, but not in Titan IV, NLS,
   or Spacelifter budgets. Of course then, the others look mighty
   cheap.
   
   I myself have given up the idea of comparison/contrast of launch
   vehicle costs, it's a Kobayashi Maru scenario if there ever was one.
   Instead, I'll let McDAC prove they can do it cheaper than Shuttle,
   since the DC-1 is the only thing on the drawing boards with similar
   objectives (sending up humans and payload and bringing them back.)
   
   -Brian