Which 1 first, nuclear rockets or space elevator?

Originally posted by zeeblebot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_shuttle

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Building Space Shuttle Endeavour cost about US$1.7 billion. One Space Shuttle launch costs around $450 million.[6]

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Roger A. Pielke, Jr. has estimated that the Space Shuttle program has cost about US$170 billion (2008 dollars) through early 2008. This works out to an average cost per flight of a ...[text shortened]... D-1 and D-2 (for Deutschland) with a mission control in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.[9][10]

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With more than 2.5 million parts, the Space Shuttle has been called the most complex machine yet created by humanity.[5]
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Originally posted by zeeblebot
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With more than 2.5 million parts, the Space Shuttle has been called the most complex machine yet created by humanity.[5]
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I had no idea they had spent 170 bil on that project. I think it came about because of the original space station which was to be built around Carter's time in office. But Carter canceled the space station but kept the shuttle which was supposed to be the space station truck. Seems to me he should have canceled the truck instead and kept the space station and just used what we had been using all along, throwaway boosters.
In retrospect it seems obvious. With 170 bil to spend, we could be on Mars by now.

Originally posted by sonhouse
I had no idea they had spent 170 bil on that project. I think it came about because of the original space station which was to be built around Carter's time in office. But Carter canceled the space station but kept the shuttle which was supposed to be the space station truck. Seems to me he should have canceled the truck instead and kept the space station and just used what we had been using all along, throwaway boosters.

The re-usability of the space shuttle, makes it an attractive option. It seems though that is its sheer complexity has resulted in massive development costs.

In retrospect it seems obvious. With 170 bil to spend, we could be on Mars by now.
We are on mars. We just haven't sent humans there. The space shuttle for humans and the idea of sending humans to mars are so expensive that they don't really make much sense at all except for publicity purposes. Even so, I think better robots on mars could provide just as much publicity as humans on mars and work out a lot cheaper too.

I think that computers and robotics have advanced far enough that it would make more sense to put the money into development of better robots.

Originally posted by twhitehead
The re-usability of the space shuttle, makes it an attractive option. It seems though that is its sheer complexity has resulted in massive development costs.

[b]In retrospect it seems obvious. With 170 bil to spend, we could be on Mars by now.
We are on mars. We just haven't sent humans there. The space shuttle for humans and the idea of sending ...[text shortened]... d far enough that it would make more sense to put the money into development of better robots.[/b]

I agree with that, at least in the near term (next one hundred years). Assuming our civilization can continue with its blistering pace of scientific and technological advancement for the next 100 or 200 years or so.

Any major blip in the world economy through wars, diseases, manmade disasters like in the gulf oil spill, or the consequences of global warming may kill all the world's space programs. I think at some point we need to establish long term colonies on Mars and further out just as insurance so a single planet strike like a large asteroid would not wipe us out.

Robots in the near term are the way to go for sure but eventually we need to get humans out of our Earthly nest and into space at large, first with lunar and Mars colonies then with interstellar vessels, even generation ships maybe, going only 0.05 c to get humanity away from this region of space.

In order for us to survive in the long term, we need colonies 200 light years apart or so. Of course at 0.05c that would be a 4000 year trip but maybe we wouldn't send actual humans but frozen embryo's to be grown into humans when the AI's onboard find a human compatible planet.

Maybe first making a livable space on a nearby moon while more intense studies of the target planet is started when humans would have presumably grown up, maybe a bit nutsoid being raised by AI's but at least able to reproduce and check out for sure whether a target planet is suitable for Earth style life.

Of course that is all science fiction which has been written already a hundred times over but if we make it unscathed through the next 200 years such a thing may come about for real.

Originally posted by twhitehead
The re-usability of the space shuttle, makes it an attractive option. It seems though that is its sheer complexity has resulted in massive development costs.

[b]In retrospect it seems obvious. With 170 bil to spend, we could be on Mars by now.
We are on mars. We just haven't sent humans there. The space shuttle for humans and the idea of sending ...[text shortened]... d far enough that it would make more sense to put the money into development of better robots.[/b]

they stopped designing with the shuttle, except for some upgrades to the cockpit, i think.

the successors are in redesign hell. the space station was redesigned (FULL redesigns) several times before it launched, and costs ballooned as a result.

imagine designing a product then throwing it away, over and over.

Originally posted by zeeblebot
imagine designing a product then throwing it away, over and over.

I agree. Whoever made the choice to use the shuttle, thought that hardware would cost more than design costs. It seems they were wrong. Or were they?
Does anyone know how many shuttle flights have been made? What was the average material cost to build one, and what was the design cost overall?

Originally posted by twhitehead
I agree. Whoever made the choice to use the shuttle, thought that hardware would cost more than design costs. It seems they were wrong. Or were they?
Does anyone know how many shuttle flights have been made? What was the average material cost to build one, and what was the design cost overall?

I didn't see #'s for design cost in this wiki but it was interesting, 115 flights:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program

Originally posted by twhitehead
I agree. Whoever made the choice to use the shuttle, thought that hardware would cost more than design costs. It seems they were wrong. Or were they?
Does anyone know how many shuttle flights have been made? What was the average material cost to build one, and what was the design cost overall?

i meant the space station!

several designs before one made it to orbit!

designs are expensive, too. thousands of people working on them.

Originally posted by zeeblebot
i meant the space station!

several designs before one made it to orbit!

designs are expensive, too. thousands of people working on them.

I agree designs are expensive but not like in the '80s, since there are so many computer aids like Autocad and more advanced analysis programs like mathematica, matlabs and so forth. It increases the design power of each designer hundreds of times more efficient than 20 or 30 years ago. You can integrate stress analysis, ergonomics, energy efficiency and so forth at a much higher level now.

Remember, computers are now talking petaflops for the big guys and that means teraflop computers on the cheap right now which really puts autocad and so forth a hundred times faster than 20 years ago. A run of the mill Dell now puts out tens of billions of operations per second and the newest specialty computers can be a hundred times as fast for less than 20,000 bucks. I would imagine in another 20 years, petaflop computers will be as commonplace as casio calculators are today.

Originally posted by sonhouse
I agree designs are expensive but not like in the '80s, since there are so many computer aids like Autocad and more advanced analysis programs like mathematica, matlabs and so forth. It increases the design power of each designer hundreds of times more efficient than 20 or 30 years ago. You can integrate stress analysis, ergonomics, energy efficiency and so ...[text shortened]... in another 20 years, petaflop computers will be as commonplace as casio calculators are today.

It doesn't necessarily follow that design cost will drop.

With computers, there is a tendency to believe that their assistance will reduce the workload, but quite often we end up trying to do more (because we can) and thus the workload does not get reduced. When people used type writers they typed things out once and that was it. They also took typing courses. Nowadays we type it, edit it, format it, print it, format it again, proof read it, - and all this with one finger.

It may be that we end up with better, but not cheaper, designs.

Being NASA, it may also be that they put a whole lot of money and effort into custom design software and cutting edge (at the start of the project) computers, and end up spending far more. I'm sure you've heard the story about the NASA space pen vs the Russian pencil. It may not be a true story, but it illustrates the fact that better design skills doesn't always result in cost savings.

Originally posted by sonhouse
I agree designs are expensive but not like in the '80s, since there are so many computer aids like Autocad and more advanced analysis programs like mathematica, matlabs and so forth. It increases the design power of each designer hundreds of times more efficient than 20 or 30 years ago. You can integrate stress analysis, ergonomics, energy efficiency and so ...[text shortened]... in another 20 years, petaflop computers will be as commonplace as casio calculators are today.

more like corporate welfare.

once upon a time McDonnell-Douglas boasted that the ISS was their most profitable venture. whereupon the next time it came up for bid, NASA granted the project to Boeing.