henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (07/03/83)
In the midst of an otherwise-irrelevant paper in the Journal of the
British Interplanetary Society I ran across something a bit startling.
It was discussing the matter of an expanded Shuttle fleet. The current
production price of an orbiter is about $1 billion, mostly because it
is essentially a one-shot construction job. The price would drop quite
dramatically, it seems, if a production line were set up. The paper
gave the number of $200 million per orbiter. Now, here's the striking
part: as few as half a dozen more orbiters could justify setting up
the production line. In other words, $1 billion right now will buy you
one more orbiter; $1.2 billion will buy SIX more orbiters! Now that
is more like a reasonable fleet!
The odds of NASA funding a fifth orbiter right now seem poor, and the
time for a decision is fast approaching. Startup costs for further
production will rise sharply in the near future as the construction
facilities start to shut down. STC's bid to privately fund a fifth
orbiter in exchange for orbiter marketing rights is still unresolved,
last I heard. But if STC puts up $1 billion for one orbiter, maybe
NASA could be convinced to spend $0.2 billion to change "one" to "six".
Does anybody know if the figures are accurate? The author of the
paper didn't give a reference for them.
--
Henry Spencer
U of Toronto
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