I’m reading it, and I’ll probably post on it as I go, in a series of posts. I’m also working on an related column for NRO. My initial impression, having read the summary and just started to get into the first section–it’s a great, free book for anyone who wants to understand the history of the manned space program, and the Shuttle, and how we got into the mess we’re in. The fact that John Logsdon was on the panel helps ensure that the history is accurate. I often disagree with John about the future, but he can be counted on to get his past correct (even if he occasionally misinterprets it).

A lot of it I’m just skimming, because little is new to me. I just want to comment on this bit for now:

Rockets, by their very nature, are complex and unforgiving vehicles. They must be as light as possible, yet attain out-standing performance to get to orbit. Mankind is, however, getting better at building them. In the early days as often as not the vehicle exploded on or near the launch pad; that seldom happens any longer. It was not that different from early airplanes, which tended to crash about as often as they flew. Aircraft seldom crash these days, but rockets still fail between two-and-five percent of the time. This is true of just about any launch vehicle ? Atlas, Delta, Soyuz, Shuttle ? regardless of what nation builds it or what basic configuration is used; they all fail about the same amount of the time. Building and launching rockets is still a very dangerous business, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future while we gain experience at it. It is unlikely that launching a space vehicle will ever be as routine an undertaking as commercial air travel ? certainly not in the lifetime of anybody who reads this. The scientists and engineers continually work on better ways, but if we want to continue going into outer space, we must continue to accept the risks.

As regular readers are aware, I disagree that it is “…unlikely that launching a space vehicle will ever be as routine an undertaking as commercial air travel.”

It may not achieve the level of safety and reliability of aircraft, but I do think that it will become routine, in the sense of regular schedules, and something that millions of people will be able to afford to do, and will be safe enough for them to do, in my lifetime, and certainly in the lifetime of young adults. This conventional wisdom is based on 1) an underestimate of how long lifetimes of those living today may be and 2) a misunderstanding of the reasons that it isn’t routine.

And of course, most of the “basic configurations used” are variations on a flawed theme–one-shot systems, built at low rates, which makes it difficult to get good statistical quality control. It’s not really a physics or an energy problem–it’s more a consequence of the path that we’ve followed in launch system design for the past forty years. Fortunately, we’re starting to break out of that with a return to developing suborbital vehicles, and doing it right.

[Update at 5 PM PDT]

Page 24: “The per-mission cost was more than $140 million…”

What does that mean?

One of the frustrating things about discussing launch costs is that people don’t use the vocabulary consistently. I suspect that’s the marginal cost (that is, the cost of flying the next flight, given that the system is already operating). It’s not the average cost (the total number of flights per year divided by the annual budget)–that’s much higher.