SpaceX planning next launch for November - going to dock with ISS

http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

In article m,
says...

http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

Technically, it will berth to ISS, not dock with it.

I wish them luck. They appear to be out in front in the race to
commercially resupply ISS. I hope everyone remembers this is still just
a test flight. There will be problems that crop up.

Jeff
--
" Solids are a branch of fireworks, not rocketry. :-) :-) ", Henry
Spencer 1/28/2011

In article m,
says...

Alan Erskine wrote:
http://www.spacex.com/updates.php


OK, I am impressed with their progress.

Out of curiosity. how uch is NASA paying for such launches ? We know
that a shuttle launch was roughly $400 million. Would be interestin to
know how much for a falcon 9 launch. (and how much would NASA be paying
for a Progress launch ?)

The only fair way to figure per flight costs for the shuttle is to
divide the total program costs by the number of flights. Development
costs ought to be included as well. That number is a lot higher than a
mere $400 million.

Jeff
--
" Solids are a branch of fireworks, not rocketry. :-) :-) ", Henry
Spencer 1/28/2011

Out of curiosity. how uch is NASA paying for such launches ? We know
that a shuttle launch was roughly $400 million. Would be interestin to
know how much for a falcon 9 launch. (and how much would NASA be paying
for a Progress launch ?)


shuttle program was about 5 billion per year so each flight was over a
billion assuming 4 flights per year.....

just consider that cost

On Fri, 19 Aug 2011 06:20:38 -0700 (PDT), bob haller
wrote:

Out of curiosity. how uch is NASA paying for such launches ? We know
that a shuttle launch was roughly $400 million. Would be interestin to
know how much for a falcon 9 launch. (and how much would NASA be paying
for a Progress launch ?)


shuttle program was about 5 billion per year so each flight was over a
billion assuming 4 flights per year.....

Several sources, including Space.com and Wikipedia (caveat emptor)
suggest that the total Shuttle program cost from inception to final
flight, was around $200 billion.

There were 135 flights.

$1.48 billion per flight.

Brian

On Aug 19, 6:55*pm, Brian Thorn wrote:
On Fri, 19 Aug 2011 06:20:38 -0700 (PDT), bob haller
wrote:

Out of curiosity. how uch is NASA paying for such launches ? We know
that a shuttle launch was roughly $400 million. Would be interestin to
know how much for a falcon 9 launch. (and how much would NASA be paying
for a Progress launch ?)

shuttle program was about 5 billion per year so each flight was over a
billion assuming 4 flights per year.....

Several sources, including Space.com and Wikipedia (caveat emptor)
suggest that the total Shuttle program cost from inception to final
flight, was around $200 billion.

There were 135 flights.

$1.48 billion per flight.

Brian

that number makes pork piggies squeal with delight

"bob haller" wrote in message
...

On Aug 19, 6:55 pm, Brian Thorn wrote:
On Fri, 19 Aug 2011 06:20:38 -0700 (PDT), bob haller
wrote:

Out of curiosity. how uch is NASA paying for such launches ? We know
that a shuttle launch was roughly $400 million. Would be interestin to
know how much for a falcon 9 launch. (and how much would NASA be paying
for a Progress launch ?)

shuttle program was about 5 billion per year so each flight was over a
billion assuming 4 flights per year.....

Several sources, including Space.com and Wikipedia (caveat emptor)
suggest that the total Shuttle program cost from inception to final
flight, was around $200 billion.

There were 135 flights.

$1.48 billion per flight.

Brian

that number makes pork piggies squeal with delight

-------------------

And they originally said it would only cost $7 million per flight. They
should shoot whoever was responsible for that blunder.

On Sat, 20 Aug 2011 12:16:45 -0700, "Bootstrap Bill"
wrote:

And they originally said it would only cost $7 million per flight. They
should shoot whoever was responsible for that blunder.

Well, Shuttle completely blew it economically, sure. But you have to
be careful when comparing original promises with the final numbers.
The original cost projections assumed Shuttle would fly much more
often, launching essentially all of the Western World's satellites
except for the little ones launched on Scouts. That never happened,
and since it didn't, Shuttle's per-launch-costs were never remotely
possible.

After 1986, the Shuttle was withdrawn from 2/3 of its originally
anticipated market (Reagan banned commercial satellite launches on
Shuttle and DoD bailed as fast as it could, leaving only NASA science
missions for Shuttle.) Worse, the Europeans introduced their own
launch system in the interim, cutting into a large part of what
commercial market there would have been for Shuttle even if it had
stayed in the business.

Shuttle could never have achieved its 50-per-year projections, even if
the infrastructure had been up to it (but the infrastructure was
limited to 22-24... the number of ETs that could theoretically be
built annually at Michoud). The payloads just weren't there. NASA was
counting on "if you build it, they will come", but they didn't come.

And the payloads still aren't there. The West still doesn't come close
to having 50 payloads per year waiting for launch, never mind more
payloads than that since Ariane and Shuttle could both have launched
more than one at a time.

The drastically lower flight rate isn't the whole story, but it is a
big part of it.

Brian

In article , bthorn64
@suddenlink.net says...

On Fri, 19 Aug 2011 06:20:38 -0700 (PDT), bob haller
wrote:

Out of curiosity. how uch is NASA paying for such launches ? We know
that a shuttle launch was roughly $400 million. Would be interestin to
know how much for a falcon 9 launch. (and how much would NASA be paying
for a Progress launch ?)


shuttle program was about 5 billion per year so each flight was over a
billion assuming 4 flights per year.....

Several sources, including Space.com and Wikipedia (caveat emptor)
suggest that the total Shuttle program cost from inception to final
flight, was around $200 billion.

There were 135 flights.

$1.48 billion per flight.

This is the only fair way to figure a "cost per flight" of a system.
Unfortunately, you often need to wait for the program to end to obtain
the final value. This is because the initial R&D cost is often quite
high and dominates in the beginning of a program. Shuttle supporters
quite often ignored R&D costs since those costs were paid for in
previous fiscal years.

On top of that, shuttle supporters would often cite the cost to add an
additional flight to the manifest as the cost of a shuttle flight.
While this cost may be valid for the "extra" flight, this sort of
accounting means that the "regular" flights bear all of the fixed costs
(infrastructure like buildings, ground equipment, people, etc.) For a
program with a very low flight rate like the shuttle, these fixed costs
dominate the per flight costs, so any "cost per flight" which ignored
these costs was disingenuous for all but a truly "extra" flight.

Considering NASA's projected SDHLV flights (looks like a maximum of two
to four SLS launches per year), it's looking like SDHLV will be even
worse than shuttle when it comes to fixed costs dominating overall
program costs. I'm still waiting for SDHLV to collapse under its own
high costs and drawn out schedule.

Jeff
--
" Solids are a branch of fireworks, not rocketry. :-) :-) ", Henry
Spencer 1/28/2011

On Mon, 22 Aug 2011 09:04:08 -0400, Jeff Findley
wrote:


Several sources, including Space.com and Wikipedia (caveat emptor)
suggest that the total Shuttle program cost from inception to final
flight, was around $200 billion.

There were 135 flights.

$1.48 billion per flight.

This is the only fair way to figure a "cost per flight" of a system.

I do wonder, though, if other launch systems are costed the same way.
I am very doubtful Titan IV was.

Brian