“Why don;t they just fly the space shuttles commercially?”

I’ll take a stab at this from a slightly different direction.

Changing ownership of the Shuttle program from the U.S. Government to a private company doesn’t change the technical challenges, so the cost structure stays the same. Where private companies can affect that is in lowering the cost of the material and tasks.

But when you have a custom built system, there is little that can be done to change the cost structure of the custom parts you buy, unless the private company starts building all the expensive parts itself – not likely with the Shuttle.

The other issue is profit. The private company has to make money, so let’s say that they need to make 20% profit on their revenue, which would allow 15% true profit while building up a 5% management reserve in case of unforeseen problems (delays of various sorts, “incidents”, etc.). So for the U.S. Government to see any cost savings, the private company has to lower their costs by more than 20%. Not an easy task for a completely custom-built transportation system.

Of course this is an academic question, since there is no need for the Shuttle anymore. It was instrumental in building the ISS, but now that it’s done we don’t need the abilities of the Shuttle to resupply the ISS, and there are no new space assembly programs on the horizon.

The U.S. Government has no reason to buy Shuttle flights, because there is nothing the U.S. Government needs to do in space that require the Shuttle.

Time to focus our efforts on what’s next.

Why don;t they just fly the space shuttles commercially?

Because they killed 14 people and it was decided in January 2004 to retire them because the design flaws couldn’t be overcome.

For a reminder of why Shuttle was retired:

http://spaceksc.blogspot.com/2011/07/complex-and-risky-system.html

Nesting Dragons resting in their lair

Spreading their wings,
Alas no sign of Orion.

Very interesting, thanks!

“Garver bluntly told her audience that if Congress refuses to invest in commercial space today, it will only be more money going to Russia in the years ahead.”

At least we finally have someone at the top who is both honest and reasonably well informed. Unfortunately we also have a lot of people in the middle who won’t tell you what they really think.

Titled “Competitive Private Enterprise in Space,” the essay appeared in a book titled Peacetime Uses of Outer Space, edited by Simon Ramo.

Cordiner wrote:

Since the space effort will, for a long time, be primarily a research and development effort, this tendency could lead to an unexpected, and perhaps undesirable, build-up of government-controlled facilities. Looking to the future, when the space frontier has been explored and is ready for economic development, we might well find the area pre-empted by the government, which would then have most of the personnel and facilities available. This would leave the nation almost no choice except to settle for nationalized industry in space …

As we step up our activities on the space frontier, many companies, universities, and individual citizens will become increasingly dependent on the political whims and necessities of the Federal government. And if that drift continues without check, the United States may find itself becoming the very kind of society that it is struggling against — a regimented society whose people and institutions are dominated by a central government.

The man called it — fifty years ago.

Cordiner was a staunch Republican, a good friend of Ronald Reagan and served as the head of the Republican Finance Committee for Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign.

One can only image what Cordiner would think of today’s political porkery by Republicans like Hutchison and Hall.

For those interested, I wrote a commentary here:

“Nationalized Space”

That’s why SpaceX wants to combine the next two big milestones into one and go to ISS on the next flight – complete that and they are in operational mode….

“Everything except flying.”

There you go making rash “spinning out of control” statements again.

COTS does pay for flying, and SpaceX has already been paid $5M for it’s first COTS flight.

The next CCDev contract series encompasses “CTS preflight, flight, docking, on-orbit, undocking, and post flight operations across all ground and flight phases including nominal, off-nominal, and emergency modes“, so that goes all the way through flight certification.

The CCDev model follows the modern model of having “fly-offs” of real hardware, not vaporware awards like the Ares family.

Why are you dead-set against competition – is it because the companies you favor (or work for) can’t compete on a level playing field?