--- Patrick Wiggins <paw@trilobyte.net> wrote:
Interesting you would mention that. Following my gig with Jake Garn and Scott Horowitz on Take 2 last Sunday . . . . Horowitz, who has ridden the shuttle 4 times, spoke most about the complexity of the shuttle and how more simplicity is needed.
The decision dilemma for the shuttle always has revolved around that it's not having any better of a catastrophic loss rate as compared to modern boosters - which is related to complexity, including those 23,000 heat shield tiles. The longest in-use human booster - the Soyuz - up through the middle of the 1980s - had a catastrophic loss rate of about 1-30. Since the mid-80s it's improved to about 1-in-60. This isn't much different from the U.S.'s booster rate for all modern boosters - excluding the shuttle. Each shuttle launch costs about $650 million. I'm guessing the replacement cost is up to around $4 to $6 billion per orbiter - or about $100,000,000 (0.1 billion) over 50 launches. This excludes the non-economic cost of the crew's loss-of-life. At what point do you decide that cost is socially and/or economically acceptable, i.e. - an "airplane" that can fly 50 times and then results in the loss of the crew, considering the mission to be achieved? How would your "acceptability meter" tilt if the catastrophic loss rate was 1-in-100, 1-in-200, 1-in-300? At what catastrophic loss rate is risk in the "gung-ho" range vs. the "it does not work" range? Just asking some questions to plumb the prevailing group sentiment. (For me, it's probably between 1-in-150 to 1-in-200 for the "gung-ho" rate.) So, what's your acceptable loss rate? - Canopus56 (Kurt) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com