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I saw a recent paper online that compared ESA and NASA cost estimates for the Mars Direct Program.
The NASA estimate for the Ares booster development was nearly THIRTEEN BILLION dollars while the ESA estimate was more than ELEVEN BILLION dollars.
These estimates were roughly one third of total program costs.
Why exactly is the development of the Ares booster, which uses variants or at most upgrades of existing STS tech so staggeringly expensive?
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Engineeris got to eat to ya know?
But seriously, the last launch vehicle of that size, the Saturn V cost over 7 billion to develope, in 1967 dollars. That would be nearly 40 billion to day. Comparitivly, it's a bargin.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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The question was: Why does it have to cost so much?
To go from the engineering the boosters to the finish product that you can launch you need to think of every thing that involved in the development and production and the facilities that it takes to launch it and ground support. Depending on whether you have a proven design or there working on new technology type will also increase the price too. But, even with a proven design type rocket, you can't just go out and build a rocket and test fire it. It generally takes two or three year to design and build fixture, buy the tool and test maybe two or three variation to proof a design of a heavy booster. But, even after you buy everything you need to have, these heavy booster will still probably cost several hundred million dollars and prep work to launch any heavy booster will generally cost ten to twenty or even thirty time what the launch cost is going to be after the rocket been developed and ready for launch and/or any rocket after the first rocket been built.
Larry,
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Dayton 3,
The cost of development shouldn't be anymore than cost for aircraft development / prototyping or car development / prototyping. Today we can design and simulate all the conditions required for the design before wind tunnel testing and eventual full scale construction.
Once a design has been taking to prototype construction stage - all the costs for tooling, and casting are taken at that time any future sales of that model would start recouping the development costs and also current production costs and a profit margin. Still shouldn't cost alot more then large commercial aircraft costs.
Somewhere , alot of money has been and continues to be wasted for political or finance gains. Not for the benefit for the space program as a whole.
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[...] even with a proven design type rocket, you can't just go out and build a rocket and test fire it. It generally takes two or three year to design and build fixture, buy the tool and test maybe two or three variation to proof a design of a heavy booster. But, even after you buy everything you need to have, these heavy booster will still probably cost several hundred million dollars and prep work to launch any heavy booster will generally cost ten to twenty or even thirty time what the launch cost is going to be after the rocket been developed and ready for launch and/or any rocket after the first rocket been built.
Perhaps this is what new technologies should address, rather than faster transit times.
Simpler and more rapid tooling. Easier launch preparation. Longer component shelf life. These are just as worthy goals as higher specific impulse, and will ultimately go farther toward making ours a space-faring civilization.
Remember Eli Whitney? He became infamous for inventing the cotton gin, but that was a historical hiccup compared to the impact of his other invention: interchangable, standardized parts.
"We go big, or we don't go." - GCNRevenger
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[...] even with a proven design type rocket, you can't just go out and build a rocket and test fire it. It generally takes two or three year to design and build fixture, buy the tool and test maybe two or three variation to proof a design of a heavy booster. But, even after you buy everything you need to have, these heavy booster will still probably cost several hundred million dollars and prep work to launch any heavy booster will generally cost ten to twenty or even thirty time what the launch cost is going to be after the rocket been developed and ready for launch and/or any rocket after the first rocket been built.
Perhaps this is what new technologies should address, rather than faster transit times.
Simpler and more rapid tooling. Easier launch preparation. Longer component shelf life. These are just as worthy goals as higher specific impulse, and will ultimately go farther toward making ours a space-faring civilization.
Remember Eli Whitney? He became infamous for inventing the cotton gin, but that was a historical hiccup compared to the impact of his other invention: interchangable, standardized parts.
Actually, we have to address everything if we intend to become a space fairing nation or space fairing planet. We need to break these things down into catagories or area's that we need to be improved and made more efficient and then looked at in the whole with all the area's that we are trying to improve to see how they fit together. For example, what would be the point of having an effecient way to build a chemical rocket if we had a Mars Mission to build a city on Mars. Those Chemical Rockets are just too ineffecient to get the job done and you would never be able to do anything more than just a small research station on Mars and never be able to build that City Mars, because of the ineffeciency of those Chemical Rockets.
But, your right we need to find cheaper ways to engineer thing and develop more versitile ways to manufacture things. Instead of having one fixture per operation you build a super fixture for multibile operation so you can do more and do it more efficiently. You may have to build two or three super fixture so you can set up an assembly line operation. If you set up an assembly line then you will have to place machines so you can run your part in rapid succession to get that effeciency that your looking for. You have to remember that when we talk about effeciency that we could be talking about several different things in several different area's.
So effeciency could be:
1. Que time or amount of time a part wait until it goes to the next operation. This is importain if your borrowing money or paying taxes. Let take landing Gear as an example. It generally take three to four months to run stuff through an average Landing Gear Manufacturer, but what if you could do it in one month or one and a half month and saving that you would have in both interest and taxes. You will generally have about 30 to 40 million dollars worth of inventory in the shop at all time. But, if you had a one month or so turn around you would have 1/2 to 1/4 of that inventory in the shop to do the same amount of business. If your being charged 7% to 9% persent interest you could be paying three or four hundred thousand dollar or more in interest and maybe hundred thousand or more in taxes. So having a fast turn around is effeciency.
2. To get that fast turn around so you save that interest and tax money, where are your machines? Are they in a cell to your set up to do them fast or are they all over the shop with long Que times? It take time and cost money to pull all your machines into one place to get that effeciency. You have to dedicate machines, fixture, tool and even a staging area to run an operation like that. You can't say let it be done and have it done. You have to plan the whole thing out and decide if the cost is worth it to you to do it and then give the authorization and allow for the funds to pay for the operation. We are talking about tens of thousand or hundreds of thousand or even in the millions of dollars to accomplish the mission set forword.
I have worked in Manufacturing or machine most of my life and I know what it takes to produce something even in a private corporation or small machine shop. Any body that talks like there nothing to manufacturing, doesn't know what he's talking about and is full shit. You don't just puch a button turn everything on and your in business. It does not work that way and that a fact.
Larry,
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The reason each launch costs so much is simple economics
We will only launch a certain amount of the same vehicle each year probably maxing out at about 6. The cargo is worth extremely more than the launch vehicle. Economics state that maxing production with reusability is the way to reduce costs.
BUT, at the moment with the lack of launches by the same system and zero reusability means that each launch is by a system that is for all intents and purposes hand made. Why risk a launch on a mass produced item when a hand made is available. Only increasing the launch rate will reduce costs.
Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.
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There is another quite simple reason besides the economics that rockets cost so much to develop:
Rockets are hard to make
Rockets must have the highest possible performance for their materials & fuels in order to carry practical amounts of payload, and they must withstand extreme stresses too. That makes rockets cost money, lots of money.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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