Originally posted by dr_rocket:
Sure you can use the shuttle engines many times and that is bound to save some money. There are, however many costs beside the monetary. How many astronauts lost their lives during shuttle flight ops? That is a heavy cost that must be figured in.
not one was lost due to engine failure. they all died due to complacency. the thing your ignoring is the percentage that have been lost due to single use rockets vs lost due to multi use rockets. its much higher percentage for the single use rockets.
On the monetary side, the last time I looked the cost of putting most payloads into orbit is not cheaper via shuttle. Shuttle launches are subsidized, so there is a false economy here.
no, its more expensive, but they are also bigger and more complex. in addition, most of the expense is involved with the throwaway portion of the shuttle.
Have you noticed that the military is not using the shuttle as much. Maybe they think it is too unreliable for things that involve national security.
every heard of aurora. its top secret so you will not hear of much about it, but it is known to exist, it is known to be used by the military, and its known to be a multi use manned rocket.
Reusable spacecraft are in principle more economic. However, this will require a sustained development effort. The shuttle is the very first and only step in this direction.
the first step is the most expensive. after that its largely a matter of modifying what you have learned to meet the new system requirements. a few new techniques will need to be developed, but nasa is already working on them for other projects.
In terms of efficacy, it seems that NASA has chosen an approach, using throw-aways, that has been historically more reliable. This way NASA will at least have a program.
The best use of funds is the use that succeeds!
what they have decided to do is to upgrade the same system that was used before. it failed once out of 7 tries. how is that more successful than the shuttle
We are no where near the point were we can gas up the space ship and shoot off to Mars. Space technology is NOT a mature technology.
what does this this have to do with mars mission at this time. nothing. it does give us more work in that direction. but hardly anything else.