Low-Cost Space Shuttle Replacement Proposed

FleaPlus writes "The Washington Times and Space.com has an article on a plan for a low-cost shuttle replacement by t/Space, an organization whose team includes AirLaunch LLC and Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites. Instead of a one-size-fits-all craft, t/Space's plan is to build an air-launched four-person capsule termed the Crew Transfer Vehicle (CXV), specialized for carrying people to and from low-Earth orbit. Once in orbit the CXV would dock with a separately-launched Crew Exploration Vehicle (likely built by Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman), which could be optimized for traveling between Earth orbit and the Moon. The CXV would also be able to dock with a space station or serve as a crew lifeboat. The group, which has already received some NASA funding, calculates that it can have the system ready by 2008 for $400 million, with a per-launch cost of $20 million (compared to ~$500 million per shuttle launch). Development would be done under a competitive fixed-price (instead of cost-plus) contract."

Comments

Why not?

[mmc]

Why not just give them US$400M? Northrup and the others will spend that kind of money just thinking about it all - then at least they'll have two options at the end of it!

Cost

[ArbiterOne]

400 million? It costs 2 billion (taxpayer) dollars to build ONE stealth bomber. One.
This is cheap.
If we can get back into space for 400 million, call it a bargain and GO!

Re:Hmm

[Jarnis]

Actually, considering what Scaled Composites has done so far, and the budget they've used, I have some belief that this might be doable. Of course it would not include funds for running a huge NASA paperpusher army, so it probably won't include costs of extensive certifications and testings to get the failure rate down to minimal. Space is risky business, and spending megabucks for additional 1-2% success rate is just a bad idea. Every astronaut can themselves consider the risks and decide if they are happy with the launch vehicle.

Nobody was out there demanding stacks of paper and testing from the Wright brothers when they experimented. In retrospect their contraption was highly unstable and unsafe. Same should apply for launch system developments. Sure, stuff will blow up, and people will die. People who understood the risks and knew exactly what they were doing. If they run out of people who are willing to hop onboard, they know they must spend time and money on the safety. Today, I doubt they'll have many issues as long as the (test)pilots are involved in the process and know how the tincan they are hopping into ticks.

No need to bog it all down with 100M$s of paperwork and extra safety tests and checks that really won't improve safety. The law of diminishing returns applies - sure, you want to test and make sure the damn thing works, but beyond certain point extra testing and checking is not going to change the safety much - only the pricetag will go up, see NASA :)

Re:Hmm

[acidrain]

Sure, stuff will blow up, and people will die.

Cute. It isn't that we can't find people who will take the risks, it's our safety obsessive culture that cannot tolerate your suggestion. Sure the money would be far better spent on foreign aid, in terms of lives per dollar, but public sentiment isn't rational. And NASA depends on public sentiment for it's cash, not the delivery of a product.