Barney Frank??? What the h*ll does Barney know about any of this stuff??? Barney is nothing but a bag of hot air and nonsense and one of the reasons this country is in such dire straights at the present time.

Get me a bucket fast.

The new Administration and Congress will not shut down the Shuttle, which is the only operational U.S. manned space flight capability, without a viable alternative.

They will also not accept reliance on the Russians for access to the Space Station (see recent news regarding Russian gas deliveries to Europe).

Almost everything else is negotiable.

Extending the program would come at a high cost; two shuttle flights a year cost $3 billion, according to outgoing NASA administrator Michael Griffin. That’s even more expensive with a $1.2 trillion fiscal-year deficit as a backdrop.

A nonsensical pair of statements. I could argue the reverse -- $3 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to an almost $3 trillion federal budget, regardless of any deficit (which would not be reduced one iota by canceling the entire space program.)

Just to keep the US Gov'ts priorities straight: *Attempting* to save failing auto manufacturers (I say *attempting* because it has yet to be seen if that $ will actually do anything but delay the inevitable) at a cost of nearly all of NASA's annual budget is OK, bailing out an incompetent/greedy/criminal/etc. financial industry with hundreds of billions more is OK, but saving extremely skilled aerospace jobs at a cost of $3 billion per year is deemed possibly "too expensive" ? Give me a break......

Great Priorities,

Your comments are dead on, and along with citations of education, payback from spinoffs as well as strategic space needs, they should be noted in letters to Congress-critters by anyone who cares about the US space program.

While extending the Shuttle may not be the best answer, it is incumbent upon this country to continue to build an STS replacement and to shorten the manned flight gap.

I agree with "great priorities" but in a different way. At least most of billions for the auto and financial industries are in the form of investment securities the government owns and has a chance of getting at least some of it's money back. The $800B "economic stimulus" package to fund "shovel ready" jobs is another matter though. That taxpayer money is going out the door and will not return. NASA and it's "shovel ready" projects are an obvious choice, and extending shuttle or whatever else NASA has in the ready will be a drop in that money bucket.

The cost per shuttle mission is estimated @ about $550 million. Let's do the math, $550 millon times 2 equals
1.1 billion not the $3 billion advertised above. If you go with 4 flights per year double that figure it is still not close to $3 billion. Could it be a reporter is not being truthful here? Can you imagine that?

maybe they are accounting for the amount it would cost to retain a workforce for the whole year as well. regardless of how many launches you have a year, even if it is just one launch you have to keep all the people employed that support it.

Jake, the "$3 billion" in the article is according to Mike Griffin, not the reporter.

All of this bla-bla-bla solves nothing. We are merely watching a movie and making snide comments that disturb those sitting near us. What does solve problems with the space program are strong leaders that make tough decisions that have the support of those who choose to follow. We shall soon see how strong our leader is, won't we.

Jake, the dollar amounts for shuttle support I'm sure is based on the budgets for previous years. I have also seen the cost of a shuttle mission in the $400-$600M as well but that is probably only for shuttle processing. Remember, you have to include the cost of mission control at JSC, astronaut training (and there are currently 117 active), etc. So, there are as with any program like this economies of scale meaning that flying more doesn't cost as much because the infrastructure is already paid for.

Along this topic, does anyone know when NASA is going to layoff 60 astronauts of the 88 active (29 are "management", not qualified for flight). Since we are only going to have 2 US astronauts on the ISS I would think that if we can the shuttle, we could get rid of at least 60. A pool of 28 to fill 2 seats or 4 per year should be more than enough. That would mean that 28 would cover the 5-7 years that NASA is saying they will participate in the ISS.

Jake, the $3 billion price tag is factoring in restarting production lines for external tanks and various other components, construction of which has already come to a close. It comes from a reliable source, and in my opinion may be a tad conservative. We'll see.

The cost per shuttle mission is estimated @ about $550 million. Let's do the math, $550 millon times 2 equals
1.1 billion not the $3 billion advertised above. If you go with 4 flights per year double that figure it is still not close to $3 billion. Could it be a reporter is not being truthful here? Can you imagine that?

That's not how the numbers work. That "cost per shuttle mission" is an average cost per mission, based on some flight rate (probably six per year or so, which we haven't done in a long time -- the actual average cost is probably closer to a billion). You cannot use it to derive marginal costs of continuing to fly. The marginal cost per mission is something like a hundred fifty million, but the only useful cost numbers are the fixed annual costs to continue the program (which are almost independent of how many flights you do), or about three billion (or more) per year.

I believe they should send all Space Shuttle workers home with 96% of their base pay (Auto workers) until they are retrained to be stock brokers. Now they can go to work for JP Morgan and the other brokerage firms and learn to run up the price of gasoline to $4 per gallon until the market collapses. Then they can ask for bailout money from the same people they were just steeling from in their oil scam. I don't see a problem!!!

January 14, 2009


Subject: Keep the Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour Shuttles Flying!!!




I think shutting down the Shuttle progran after 2010 and leaving a five year gap until Constellation is ready is a very foolish decision politically.


I don't think that America can depend on the Russians for reliable transportation of our astronauts to the International Space Station. Let us recall that Russia cut natural gas supplies just recently to Europe during the cold of winter over a contract dispute with Ukraine thus putting the lives of many Europeans at risk.


The Shuttles were designed to last 100 missions each. The three remaing Shuttles, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour, are around the 30 mission mark each and should be good for many more years. In addition, there are new safety engineering programs in place to examine each Shuttle's components and their probable expected lifetimes.


The Shuttles are very probably safer to fly now then when they were first introduced.


As far as astronaut safety, each astronaut is an adult who knows space exploration can be deadly, makes very good money and is a volunteer. No astronaut is ever forced against their will to fly on a Shuttle flight.


Congress needs to increase NASA's budget sufficiently to keep the Shuttles flying until the Constellation program is designed, built, tested and ready to launch.


To depend on the Russians is like giving away one's car and depending on your neighbors for the next five years for rides to work, the grocery store, the doctor, whatever. Sooner or later you are stuck without a ride.


Hopefully, Congress will wise up and keep the Shuttles flying and provide the necessary funds to do so.


If the Congress is so willing to give the crooks on Wall Street $700,000,000,000 of OUR MONEY on the spur of the moment for extremely dubious reasons, Congress can certainly come up with the $3,000,000,000 a year extra to keep the Shuttles flying.


Ron Carlson


Texas

The Shuttle cost quoted at $3B a year is just the generalization of the direct program cost from the budget, taking into consideration that cost differences between give or take a couple of flights, lets say the difference from 2 to 4 a year, are not so great as to cause someone to give out an exact number. The "3" is a good more or less number. For a press quote people usually skip being precise, like "3.247".

A good way of calculating Shuttle costs is saying first what accounting system are you in (direct program costs or the old full costs), what is assumed "in" or "out" and needed that year (production would include keeping ATK/SRBs, Engines, MAF/ET's, and all associated parts, suppliers, etc...and operations would include JSC and KSC for mission and ground ops respectively) and then using a fixed costs plus a variable cost factor.

For "everything" in "direct program dollar accounting" the Shuttle cost any year would be "in general" given by a back-of-the napkin equation such as:

Cost = 0.85(3)+100(flights-1)

Where the 0.85(3) is the percent fixed costs and what you would spend just to be able to do it once per year and the 100 is the approximate marginal cost for the next flights.

i.e., 5 flights would be about $3B a year.

Valid only up to about 6 flights per year. Beyond that the "fixed" would vary when certain non-recurring capabilities costs would be incurred and kept, that is to achieve a "steady" rate over a decade lets say, of "6".

Valid only across spans of time, with a plus or minus any year due to variability as to the actual launch rate achieved at the dollars spent.

(Yes...I do this for a living...)