cb@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA (Christopher Byrnes) (02/03/86)
I've heard reports that it will cost about $2 billion to restart the Shuttle Orbiter production line to build a replacement for Challenger. Anyone have any figures on how much it would cost to reopen the production line and build several new shuttles? Even if there is never another tragedy, the three remaining shuttles are bound to need overhauls, etc. in the years to come. That reduces the present available fleet of three to even less for perhaps long periods, which may be unacceptable to government and commercial users. At various times over the years there have been reports of interest in commercially owned shuttles. Costs and the now hightened realization of possible lost may have scared some of these people away. But no space delivery system (that includes Ariane, conventional rockets, etc.) is 100% failure-proof. If NASA decides that it is in the national interest to reopen the production line, might there be commercial interests willing to buy one or more orbiters at less than the quoted $2 billion price tag? Any new shuttle may not be ready until after 1990. Do people still believe that the market of the 1990's will be so large (with space stations, very large communications satellites, etc.) that three shuttles and existing technology expendable booters can service it? Christopher Byrnes cb@Mitre-Bedford.ARPA ...decvax!linus!bccvax!cb.UUCP
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (02/05/86)
> Anyone have any figures on how much it would cost to reopen the > production line and build several new shuttles? ... Getting the line going again would probably drop the price per orbiter to about the $1e9 apiece price that has been cited for the existing ones. The next major price drop comes at about quantity 10, when it becomes worthwhile to make more use of volume-production techniques. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry