The strangest space vehicle

[NeonSamurai]

Originally Posted by Platapus

I have a different opinion. The STS was nice while it lasted but needed to be killed. The design had too many political, economic, and technical compromises. Some of which prevented any real major improvements.

The re-useability was mostly in name only as we were never able to turn the orbiter around for another flight without major repairs and inspections. It is unfortunate that the concept of re-useability added a lot of the cost and did not really garner that much of a benefit. The cost in the terms of pounds to low earth orbit were much higher in this "re-usable" system.

In 1995, when I wrote my paper, using the STS cost $6,000 per pound into LEO. Using the 100% expendable S1B (one of the more expensive systems we had), it cost $2,000 per pound in LEO.

Umm I think there is something is a little off with your math (or maybe it's my sources).

According to NASA, each launch with the SST in today's dollars cost an average of about $470 million, and could lift 53,600 lbs to LEO.

The Saturn 1B cost $310 million in today's dollars, but could only lift 46,000 lbs to LEO

The shuttle cost $8770 per pound of payload to LEO, while the Saturn 1B cost $6740 per pound of payload to LEO.

For fun the Saturn V cost $1.19 billion in today's dollars per launch and could lift 260,000 lbs to LEO. So it would cost $4580 per pound of payload to LEO.


So amazingly the massive Saturn V's were the most cost effective platform of the three. The only problem with them was their capacity was way to high for most missions (even if you stacked a whole raft of satellites together, it still is not cost effective for those purposes). But I believe the Russian launchers are even more cost effective. Of course it helps that those rockets were massed produced unlike any of the Saturn rockets.

Anyhow the shuttle had its uses and could do things no other craft could as easily. Such as satellite repair or recapture to be brought back down, running many experiments, carrying a large crew compliment, and I believe it was rather useful in building the ISS. But as for its intended purpose to lower costs while acting as a lifting platform, that it clearly failed in.