RIP.
Paul Spudis had some recollections of Klaus when he heard about his stroke back in February. I hadn’t seen him since the AIAA space meeting in San Jose in the fall of 2006. I first met him back in the eighties, at a AAS conference in DC, and I worked closely with his company, ECON, in the eighties and nineties, though he wasn’t very involved at that time. Many blame him for the flawed ops cost projections for the Shuttle, but he never intended that it be so misdesigned as it was, with the solid boosters and expendable tank.
Anyway, ad astra, Klaus. The space movement has lost another visionary.
About those boosters: I’ve heard seemingly conflicting stories about their cost. As far as I understand it they were cheap to design, are reasonably cheap to produce but have very high fixed costs. Do you have any insight into that?
He was part of a group that tried to finance a fifth orbiter in the early 1980s. As I remember the proposal, they would fund and purchase the orbiter; give it to NASA as owner-operator; all in return for the ability to schedule unused shuttle cargo bay mass and volume. The story at the time was there was money in the bank. NASA futzed around until the investment capital went elsewhere – which was my introduction into the ability of the NASA bureaucracy to kill things not invented there. I have a copy of a briefing on the subject somewhere. Prayers to him and his family.
Make that “for” rather than “to” (as he whines for an edit button).