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Do you have specific numbers on how much inspection and refurbishment the space shuttle went through vs F9?

ansible 5y ago
Per-flight costs for the shuttle was $1.6 billion USD (2010 dollars). A good chunk of that was refurbishment for the shuttle and the SRBs. I didn't find specific numbers in a quick Internet search. https://www.space.com/12166-space-shuttle-program-cost-promises-209-billion.html https://www.space.com/12166-space-shuttle-program-cost-promi...
- reddog 5y ago
  Isn't that the cost of the entire space shuttle program (including R&D) divided by the number of launches? I believe the real cost of turning around a shuttle flight towards the end to the program was a fraction of this. I wonder what the cost of a currrent spacex flight is doing this same kind of accounting. I don't suppose anyone really knows since spacex is a private company.
  - ansible 5y ago
    In some sense, the Shuttle program was in continuous development. But to give you some idea of the work involved in even the later launches, consider this: Instead of inspecting 24,000 tiles by hand, they developed a scanner to automate the process starting with STS-118: https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/aug/HQ_07171_Shuttle_Tile_Scanner.html https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/aug/HQ_07171_Shuttle_T... They had hundreds of techs, working thousands of hours per launch to get each orbiter ready. SpaceX is expending a tiny, tiny fraction of that effort to get each stage-1 booster ready for re-flight. Part of that of course is that the booster is coming back at sub-orbital speeds. So it is more fair to compare the F9 stage-1 to the pair of SRBs used for the Shuttle. But even then, there was a lot of effort just to get the SRBs ready for re-flight.
- no-s 5y ago
  > Per-flight costs for the shuttle was $1.6 billion USD (2010 dollars). That was the improved cost. In the late 80s I interviewed at the contractor running shuttle ops (Lockheed missiles & space?). The head of the NASA project office told me it was close to 2.4 giga$ to turn around a shuttle and they hoped to cure that with a new prime contractor arrangement (and also fix the management problem that was the proximate cause of the Challenger disaster, but apparently only suppressed it for a time...)

Per-flight costs for the shuttle was $1.6 billion USD (2010 dollars). A good chunk of that was refurbishment for the shuttle and the SRBs. I didn't find specific numbers in a quick Internet search. https://www.space.com/12166-space-shuttle-program-cost-promises-209-billion.html https://www.space.com/12166-space-shuttle-program-cost-promi...

reddog 5y ago
Isn't that the cost of the entire space shuttle program (including R&D) divided by the number of launches? I believe the real cost of turning around a shuttle flight towards the end to the program was a fraction of this. I wonder what the cost of a currrent spacex flight is doing this same kind of accounting. I don't suppose anyone really knows since spacex is a private company.
- ansible 5y ago
  In some sense, the Shuttle program was in continuous development. But to give you some idea of the work involved in even the later launches, consider this: Instead of inspecting 24,000 tiles by hand, they developed a scanner to automate the process starting with STS-118: https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/aug/HQ_07171_Shuttle_Tile_Scanner.html https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/aug/HQ_07171_Shuttle_T... They had hundreds of techs, working thousands of hours per launch to get each orbiter ready. SpaceX is expending a tiny, tiny fraction of that effort to get each stage-1 booster ready for re-flight. Part of that of course is that the booster is coming back at sub-orbital speeds. So it is more fair to compare the F9 stage-1 to the pair of SRBs used for the Shuttle. But even then, there was a lot of effort just to get the SRBs ready for re-flight.
no-s 5y ago
> Per-flight costs for the shuttle was $1.6 billion USD (2010 dollars). That was the improved cost. In the late 80s I interviewed at the contractor running shuttle ops (Lockheed missiles & space?). The head of the NASA project office told me it was close to 2.4 giga$ to turn around a shuttle and they hoped to cure that with a new prime contractor arrangement (and also fix the management problem that was the proximate cause of the Challenger disaster, but apparently only suppressed it for a time...)