A Billion Here, A Billion There

They are playing some funny games over there with the math. The F-22 cost is about right, but only if you include the development cost. This cost is sunk though. The "flyaway" cost of a new Raptor is right at $120 million.

You can't say that we could buy 5 F-16s for the cost of a Raptor, and compare the total amortized cost of an F-22 to the flyaway cost of a new F-16. If you look at the aquisition costs, it's a lot closer to 2:1. Spent money is spent money.

Now, it may be instructive to look at from a "where did we go wrong" standpoint for future aquisitions, but it has zero to do with how much it costs to buy another unit.

What your talking about, especially with the Shuttle program, is the kind of long range thinking we as civilians do when buying durable goods. We weigh the overall need, the initial cost, long range cost, operating and maintenance costs and replacement costs downstream. And why do we do all that brain sweat?

Because we are working from our own finite supply of money! We can't just "tax" ourselves a raise from our employers because didn't plan right or because we want a newer thing-a-ma-jig.

Remember that the same clowns who use our tax dollars to procure these gub'ment chattlels with sad effect, are the very same ones who plan for a 5% increase, committee it to down a 3 1/2 % increase, and then try to convince us it was a savings or a cut back or a shortfall. That definition of course depends on which side of the aisle they bow to, or what the program is.

With sound financial thinking like that, it's no wonder Mr. Augustine's prediction came true.

I think it'd be very instructive, Mark. One of the issues, I see, is that these programs were justified on economic grounds, and those grounds were only justified if the US spent large sums of money. So you front-load huge development costs. Later on, to save costs, they buy less of the finished product, negating the economic benefit.

One of the nicest things about the Ares 1 and Ares V is that they are designed with a low flight rate in mind. So that eliminates one of the tricks that the Shuttle supporters used in the 70's. It still leaves another front-load. Namely, the HLV part gets put off several years to develope an unnecessary Ares 1, on the dubious theory that having parts in common with the Ares I will lower costs.

Had we been interested in cost effectiveness we never would've opted for the Shuttle in the first place, sticking to the Saturn architecture instead.

Lost opportunity there:-(.

Had we been interested in cost effectiveness we never would've opted for the Shuttle in the first place, sticking to the Saturn architecture instead.

The Saturn wasn't cost effective, either. If it had been, we would in fact have continued it.

Had we been interested in cost effectiveness we never would've opted for the Shuttle in the first place, sticking to the Saturn architecture instead.

Lost opportunity there:-(.

I don't know about more shuttles orders in the late seventies, given it was basically a prototype. I have some sympathy for the idea that an incremental second generation shuttle series of shuttles should have been ordered in the late eighties, after 20 or so flights were under NASA's belt, and Lessons had been Learned. Of course, they got that opportunity in tragic fashion, and Rockwell even offered to produce three upgraded shuttles for the price of Endeavor; however, NASA declined the offer in favor of the commonality advantage of an OV-10* series shuttle.

Ironically, it was Administrator Trudy's pursuit of more orbiters a few years later that helped kill SEI.

One of the nicest things about the Ares 1 and Ares V is that they are designed with a low flight rate in mind. So that eliminates one of the tricks that the Shuttle supporters used in the 70's. It still leaves another front-load. Namely, the HLV part gets put off several years to develope an unnecessary Ares 1, on the dubious theory that having parts in common with the Ares I will lower costs

Even the HLV becomes unnecessary if you go with orbital rendezvous and docking.

I love how Congress cuts unit purchases because the price per unit (including sunk costs) is "too high", and then complains when the price per unit (still including sunk costs) goes *up*, after which they typically decide that the solution is to cost more units from the buy, and...

One of the nicest things about the Ares 1 and Ares V is that they are designed with a low flight rate in mind.

At the low flight rates planned, neither makes any sense to develop. Nor, for that matter, does a prolonged human spaceflight program of any kind make sense at low flight rates.

At the low flight rates planned, neither makes any sense to develop. Nor, for that matter, does a prolonged human spaceflight program of any kind make sense at low flight rates.

Yes, something that few people in the space activist community (at least the ones pleading for more money for human spaceflight) don't understand.

Either half a billion or three quarters of a billion per flight is ridiculous, and Constellation will do nothing to improve on this.