Costs
Some reasons for the higher-than-expected operational costs are:
- The final design differs from the original concept, causing, among other things, the shuttle orbiter to be almost 20% over its specified weight - resulting in it being unable to boost the US Air Force's payloads into polar orbits.
- Maintenance of the thermal protection tiles is a very labor-intensive and costly process, with some 35,000 tiles needing to be inspected individually and with each tile specifically manufactured for one specific slot on the shuttle.
- The Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs) were highly complex and maintenance-intensive, necessitating removal and extensive inspection after each flight. Before the "Block II" engines, the turbopumps (a primary engine component) had to be removed, disassembled, and totally overhauled after each flight.
- The toxic propellants used for the OMS/RCS thrusters required special handling, during which time no other activities could be performed in areas sharing the same ventilation system. This increased turn-around time.
- The launch rate was significantly lower than initially expected. While not reducing absolute operating costs, more launches per year gives a lower cost per launch. Some early hypothetical studies examined 55 launches per year (see above), but the maximum possible launch rate was limited to 24 per year based on manufacturing capacity of the Michoud facility that constructs the external tank. Early in shuttle development, the expected launch rate was about 12 per year. Launch rates reached a peak of 9 per year in 1985 but averaged fewer thereafter.
- When the decision was made on the main shuttle contractors in 1972, work was spread among companies to make the program more attractive to Congress, such as the contract for the Solid Rocket Boosters to Morton Thiokol in Utah. Over the course of the program, this raised operational costs, though the consolidation of the US aerospace industry in the 1990s means the majority of the Shuttle is now with one company: the United Space Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Read more about this topic: Criticism Of The Space Shuttle Program
Famous quotes containing the word costs:
“The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”
—Adam Smith (1723–1790)
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—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
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—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)