Comments on: Emergency spending and earmarks http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/09/27/emergency-spending-and-earmarks/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=emergency-spending-and-earmarks Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway... Wed, 17 Sep 2014 13:35:41 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.38 By: Nemo http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/09/27/emergency-spending-and-earmarks/#comment-8984 Wed, 04 Oct 2006 04:11:51 +0000 http://www.districtofbaseball.com/spacepolitics/?p=1109#comment-8984 Even for a government program, surely redesigning and requalifying the tanks in a wind tunnel couldn’t have run more than a billion dollars over the existing flight budget.

If that were all that were involved, maybe you’d have a point.

But it wasn’t, so you don’t.

]]> By: Chris Mann http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/09/27/emergency-spending-and-earmarks/#comment-8983 Sat, 30 Sep 2006 07:01:53 +0000 http://www.districtofbaseball.com/spacepolitics/?p=1109#comment-8983 I didn’t ask why the shuttle costs more at low flight rates, I asked why it costs more to not fly it at all than to fly it.

Even for a government program, surely redesigning and requalifying the tanks in a wind tunnel couldn’t have run more than a billion dollars over the existing flight budget.

]]> By: Donald F. Robertson http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/09/27/emergency-spending-and-earmarks/#comment-8982 Fri, 29 Sep 2006 23:23:01 +0000 http://www.districtofbaseball.com/spacepolitics/?p=1109#comment-8982 Al, I accept and agree with your thoughts here.

— Donald

]]> By: Al Fansome http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/09/27/emergency-spending-and-earmarks/#comment-8981 Fri, 29 Sep 2006 05:30:07 +0000 http://www.districtofbaseball.com/spacepolitics/?p=1109#comment-8981 Donald,

I think your have the right analogy, but you need to simplify it.

The bottom line is that, while the car is in the shop, you save a little on gas by not operating it, but those savings are less than the repair bill from the shop.

Also, the real costs are in the people.

The large majority of the cost of the Shuttle program is the many thousands of people who work on it. You can’t lay them off while you are repairing the shuttle. Then, on top of that payroll, you hire lots of expert engineers to come in and repair whatever went wrong.

– Al

]]> By: Donald F. Robertson http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/09/27/emergency-spending-and-earmarks/#comment-8980 Thu, 28 Sep 2006 19:35:28 +0000 http://www.districtofbaseball.com/spacepolitics/?p=1109#comment-8980 It’s a characteristic of any reusable vehicle (your car as much as the Space Shuttle) that you have to pay for it and it’s infrastructure (your garage and taxes for roads, et cetera) even if you don’t use it — the maintenance costs of keeping it ready to use have to be paid whether you fly (drive) it or not.

Unlike your car, however, the fuel and flight operations costs of the Shuttle are negligible compared to the extremely high costs of maintaining it and its support systems. Add to that the costs of developing the stuff to recover from Columbia, and it’s easy to see why not flying the Shuttle could cost more than flying it. . . .

This also explains why, at limited flight rates, expendable vehicles are not necessarily more expensive than reusable ones.

— Donald

]]> By: Chris Mann http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/09/27/emergency-spending-and-earmarks/#comment-8979 Thu, 28 Sep 2006 17:21:22 +0000 http://www.districtofbaseball.com/spacepolitics/?p=1109#comment-8979 It seems odd that not flying the shuttle cost more than flying the shuttle. Please excuse my ignorance, but why did the RTF efforts not fit in the existing budget?

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