Re: Belated look at the OSXhints April Fool's front page

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Saturn Vs lift things a lot cheaper than the Shuttle does - the Shuttle
is more expensive per launch

Saturn V launches 1964-1973: 13
Average cost in 1970: $500M
=> avg cost in 1990 $ using CPI: $1600M

Shuttle launches 1977-2008: 120
Average cost in 2007: $1300M
=> avg cost in 1990 $ using CPI: $819M

so the cost of each launch of the Shuttle is roughly half the Saturn V.
However, the incremental cost, i.e. how much it would cost to add one
more Shuttle flight is only $60 million. No idea how much incremental
cost in a Saturn V launch, but given you need an entire new spaceship
for every launch, I guess not a lot less than the $1600 million. Even if
you write off a billion of that as "development costs", the Saturn V is
still ten times more expensive than the Shuttle.

It all depends whether you want to argue that the Shuttle is an
unmitigated disaster from beginning to end, or an incredible success of
human management of an extremely complex project.

I agree with Woody that it's bloody amazing that humans have been into
space, to the moon several times, and there have been so few failures.

, and is a crap design that's inclined to kill crews.

"inclined" - 2 in 122 is hardly "inclined".

All Saturn V launches worked out fine - despite many engine failures.

and thanks to a great deal of luck. Apollo 6 could easily have become a
pretty cloud picture like Challenger, due to pretty similar faults. One
failure of a Saturn V launch, and you'd have a failure of 1 in 13, far
worse than 2 in 122 of the Shuttle. You really can't talk about
statistical reliability when you're dealing with such small numbers.

It was very safe. And a lot cheaper than the Space Shuttle.

It was very lucky. And a lot more expensive than the Space Shuttle.

If you look at the Apollo programme vs the Space Shuttle programme, not
just at the "launch vehicle" but at the whole mission, three of the
Apollo missions failed, one of them incinerating the crew, and one of
them nearly killing the crew - only luck and incredible ingenuity saved
Apollo 13.

Any way you look at it, there have been many more successful missions
into space than failures.

I wonder how many ships that set out from Europe to explore the world
were lost with all hands?

--
Pd
.

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