I have a simple question but I can't for the life of me find any answer or even a good estimate. Does anyone know at all what the estimated cost per launch is for the Ares-1 or at least what NASA is shooting for? or hoping for? or estimating?

For that matter, does anyone even know what the estimated unit capital cost for an Ares-1 stack is? Or is supposed to be? Or is hoped to be?

I can't find this anywhere!

Calculating the true costs of something as complicated as a launch vehicle is difficult and subject to a lot of debate. There are several cost factors to consider. Consider the case of the Shuttle. The NASA budget for Shuttle flights is (the last time I looked) in the neighborhood of $3 billion. If they fly 3 missions a year, then it is costing a billion dollars per flight. Some will argue that the true cost is what it would take to fly a single additional mission (the marginal cost), say $300 million or so. Personnally, I believe the more accurate cost is closer to former than the later.

Now, the Ares I is a new vehicle. There are many kinds of costs that have to be determined and the answers are not clear. For example, there's the amortized research & development costs. For the Ares I, it appears to be several billion dollars. To determine the cost per launch, you have to divide the R&D costs by the expected number of launches for the vehicle. Using round, made up numbers (I can't find the actual numbers right now, if known), suppose the R&D costs are $10 billion and the realistic number of Ares I flights were 100 (say 4 flights per year for 25 years). Simple math suggests the R&D costs are $100 million per flight.

Then there's the actual hardware costs. The Ares I is planned to have a 5 segment SRB. It'll naturally cost somewhat more than the 4 segment SRBs used on the Shuttle but it may be reusable. It'll also have a couple upgraded J-2 engines, avionics, and other disposable components that are lost with each launch. Again, using rounded made up numbers, suppose the hardware cost for the launch was $50 million. Added to the R&D costs, we're up to $150 million per launch.

Now, you have to consider the cost of the infrastructure and supporting personnel. NASA appears to be designing the Ares I more as a job protection system than a booster (IMO). If the Ares I requires a cast of thousands to prepare for launch, you need to add up the cost of employing all of those people (salary, benefits, etc) and divide that cost by the number of flights per year. Suppose all of those salaries totaled $200 million a year and you did 4 flights per year - that comes to $50 million per launch to cover the personnel costs. We're now up to $200 million per launch.

Actually, this is a simplistic analysis. It's a lot more complicated than that. The actual numbers are likely not known except perhaps the actual hardware costs (and those are likely suspect). The hard answer is that even NASA may not know how much a Ares I launch will truly cost. To use a military example, consider the case of the B-2 bomber or the F-22 fighter. In both cases, many billions of dollars were spent on R&D (IIRC, about $30 billion for the B-2 alone and somewhere around that number for the F-22). They originally planned on buying about 200 B-2s so the R&D cost per plane was going to be about $150,000,000. Instead, production was cut off at 21 planes so the R&D cost per plane was almost $1.5 billion. It actually cost about $400 million or so to build a B-2 bomber but the total cost ended up being about $2 billion per plane. The same kind of thing happened with the F-22. The Air Force originally planned to purchase was somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 planes but that has been cut to fewer than 200, greatly driving up the cost per plane. The same thing will happen to the Ares I (and the Ares V) if the number of missions gets cut. Likewise, if the flight rate is low, you'll have fewer flights per year to divide the personnel costs among.

I think the cost of Ares is kind of like vapor ware. It's mixed in with project Constellation. In '04' congress coughed up $16.2 billion to get things started. I remember reading in NASAs budget report how much is being allotted each year but I can't remember the dollar amount. It would be hard to boil down the amount of a single launch with all of those development costs.

it's like any other government funded program- if they say it costs $100, then you can bet it actually cost $500, but they spread the cost out in so many directions that it's impossible to figure out what's what.

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And yet despite this, there is a rough "launch cost" for the Atlas, the Atlas Heavy, the Delta 2, The delta 4, the Delta 4+, the Delta 4 Heavy, the Pegasus, the Minotaur and nearly every other launch system.

If you go to Orbital Sciences or Boeing and ask them how much for a launch of a given payload into a given orbit they can give you a ballpark price. If you give them all the details of when you want to do it, exactly what orbit, whether any special payload handling is needed etc etc etc then they can come up with a contract for the exact price.

One is commercially available and the other is still on a government drawing board.

Why does it have to be a "job protection system"? Why can't it be a "specialized knowledge preservation system", or a "critical expertise conservation system"?

It's not like hands-on rocketry experience is an easy skillset to recover once your organization has lost it. It is eminently sensible and proper for such an organization to make every effort to retain an experienced rocketry workforce, even if it means spending their budget on "place-holder" projects during lean times. Better to protect these jobs now, than have to rebuild a competent staff of rocket scientists, engineers, and managers from scratch later on... IMO, of course.

The goal of the design should be to lift the required payload to the specified orbit as efficiently as possible. Unfortunately, it appears that isn't NASA's goal. Instead, it seems NASA is more interested in maximizing the number of employees needed to operate the Ares which is the exact opposite of efficiency. The end result is likely to be a vehicle that's extremely expensive to operate. It really begs the question of why they're developing it in the first place. Personally, their reasons for not using an ELV are dubious, IMO.

If you go to Orbital Sciences or Boeing and ask them how much for a launch of a given payload into a given orbit they can give you a ballpark price. If you give them all the details of when you want to do it, exactly what orbit, whether any special payload handling is needed etc etc etc then they can come up with a contract for the exact price.

All of those boosters exist, so the R&D costs are already sunk. They know what it costs to build another one and it takes a known (and very small, compared to NASA) number of personnel to launch one. That makes the costs more predictable. For the Ares, none of the numbers are known and the hardware design isn't even finished. Unless NASA uses tax dollars to artifically lower the launch cost through heavy subsidizies (as they did for commercial Shuttle launches in the 1980s before the practice was banned), I doubt anyone in their right mind would consider using an Ares I booster to launch their payload.

The Ares-I is not designed to be an ISS ferry. It is part of the 1.5 launch architecture to return to the Moon. Actually, I think NASA regards it as a development program to obtain the Ares-V hardware in an incremental and thus affordable way. This makes a lot of sense. When it turns out to be too expensive to maintain 2 rockets for the Moon program, they will simply man-rate Ares-V and cancel Ares-I. ISS will be left to US private enterprise (COTS). Well, at least that's the plan.

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Sure, the boosters exist. But what portion of the project costs are the boosters?
And; What will it cost to take existing boosters and man-rate them?

The Mercury and Gemini programs were this way. They were expensive, and dealt with existing boosters. These existing boosters were not just pulled of the assembly line either. There was extensive testing done to the components of those boosters to make sure they were safe enough for not losing thier payload.

An unmanned payload is just a matter of cost assesment of risk based on payload cost. In a manned craft, risk must be reduced with a minimal consideration of any cost trade-offs.

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Ares I is definitely designed to be an ISS ferry, and will serve in that role for years. Assuming Ares V is ever built and lunar/Mars missions funded, it may serve there as well.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?cid=5167

What it is designed as, and what role it actually serves are two completely different (but necessarily compatible) things.
Ares 1 is designed to be an orbital Ferry. ISS is one of the functions that can be served by an orbital ferry, thus is an important role.

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What will it cost to take existing boosters and man-rate them?

Man-rating is a red-herring. The Shuttle was never man-rated. The biggest thing that we can hope to achieve with man-rating is to develop malfunction detection systems that can give sufficient warning so the launch escape system can save the crew. We've done this before. The Redstone and Atlas boosters used for the Mercury program as well as the Titan II used for Gemini launches were missiles adapted for the purpose. By any realistic measure, the cost of developing and adding those detection systems to existing EELVs will be only a tiny fraction of the cost of developing the Ares I (which will require those systems as well).

Delta IVs and Atlas Vs are already built and flying. To date, they have a perfect track record. Each was designed to only require a small ground crew to prepare the boosters for launch and then to launch them. NASA is still talking about maintaining a "cast of thousands" for the Ares vehicles. That's one of the biggest differences between a government program and one designed to make a profit. In addition, using an EELV for the manned flights would increase their flight rates, lowering costs for all launches (manned or unmanned). I doubt the Ares I will ever fly more than 4 missions a year and the Ares V is unlikely to fly more than twice a year. That makes for very expensive launches.

Of course... It was designed with occupancy in mind. It wasn't an unmanned craft that needed to be verified for manned use.
I agree there. Anything that can be done helps.
Yes; There was a bit more to it than adaptations.

I wish I could give a direct reference to a link, but this addressed in a NASA video on this DVD.

Apples and oranges... Sure; the business vs government plays a part in it, but it's only one of the factors.
But, what about the factors between manned vs unmanned?
How much of launch costs are in personel used to monitor and check the crew compartment, the health monitoring, the astronaut workload?

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Originally Posted by Larry Jacks
...The Shuttle was never man-rated...

Of course... It was designed with occupancy in mind. It wasn't an unmanned craft that needed to be verified for manned use.

No, the Shuttle was never man-rated because it had no escape system. Perhaps if the Shuttle had an escape system, one or both of the crews that were lost might have survived. The point is that if man-rating wasn't necessary for the Shuttle to fly more than 100 missions, why is it a show-stopper for using an EELV instead of the Ares I?

Originally Posted by Larry Jacks
...Delta IVs and Atlas Vs are already built and flying. To date, they have a perfect track record. Each was designed to only require a small ground crew to prepare the boosters for launch and then to launch them...

Apples and oranges... Sure; the business vs government plays a part in it, but it's only one of the factors.
But, what about the factors between manned vs unmanned?
How much of launch costs are in personel used to monitor and check the crew compartment, the health monitoring, the astronaut workload?

Those are independent variables. You'll need the same personnel to monitor the crew compartment regardless of whether you use an Ares I or an EELV as the launch vehicle. The questions are how many people does it take to prepare the different vehicles for launch and how do we account for the difference? From the videos I've seen on the NASA channel, they routinely have 1-3 people standing around with clipboards watching a single person do a job. Are all of those people really necessary? Do they contribute to safety or to payrolls? Commercial operations have every incentive to have safe launches because failures are bad for business. Commercial operations have achieved an admirable success rate and they've done it with a less bloated infrastructure. Perhaps government operations can learn how to operate more efficiently but they have little incentive to do so.

The central question isn't whether an Ares I or an EELV (Delta IV or Atlas V) is the better choice. I was reading an article yesterday where an efficiency engineer made an interesting observation. Paraphrasing, he said "When you go to a hardware store to look at drills, what you really want is to make a hole. Once you realize that, you can open your mind to other options on how to achieve your goal."

NASA's goal is to put humans into space. Can we really say that the Ares I and Orion are the best vehicles for that job? At the moment, I'm not satisfied with their answers. My dissatisfaction is hardly NASA's concern. However, I'm far from the only one who is dissatisfied. If this dissatisfaction spreads - especially to Congress - NASA could be in real trouble.

Talking baut Ares, guys do you think that such design would be a good one?, i mean it center of gravity seems to be too high, and the rocket is very tall, why such configuration was chosen?
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Seems the reason is commodity..due the new solid rocked design (is just me of course)

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Based on how many flights? A total of 22?
And, how about we drop the word "perfect"? Each one had a flight with some engine issue that caused an improper orbit. (per wiki's stats here and here)

Maybe not in it's entirety, but various components have been.
The solid rocket boosters are the largest man rated motors ever built.

The X-15 used a rocket engine of 57,000 pounds of thrust that was throttleable, reusable, and "man-rated" - safe enough for use in a piloted aircraft. The same description would apply to the more powerful Space Shuttle Main Engine.

That tells me that extra effort (and cost) went into (at minimum) an effort to make it man-rated.

Does not having an escape system automatically make it not man-rated?

I am at a disadvantage, because I have never grasped exactly what man-rated really means. To me, it almost sounds like man-rating just means "we're comfortable with it".

I don't see how, so I'd like to see where this is coming from. But; I'm no expert and I don't have much to go on except that it seems to me that in both cases there was nowhere to go fast enough.

You're right, so take that personel away...Is it still a cast of thousands?
With NASA, probably, but...
Your argument was based on an unmanned launch vs a manned launch in total in post 13... If you want to change the argument, then I would like to see those independent variables broken out. I don't have them myself, I am only going by what NASA has said about man-rating a booster in an old grainy worn out documentary from old NASA PR types.

My point exactly. How can we break that down?

I am not saying that NASA doesn't have un-needed overhead. I am only saying that when you put a life in a vehicle, the formulas on the safety change considerably.

You can estimate that on a cost vs risk basis, and balance that against the value of the payload...that's business. That can not be easily done with a life or with other people's money.

Thier only goal? I think not.

No we can't. Especially when you roll in the non-NASA politics of the decision.

That's really what it boils down to, isn't it?

I'm not exactly satisfied myself, but I really don't see anybody other than the evil gubmnt putting money forth to send people into orbit (at least not yet).

And; I do put a lot of blame on the backs of that gubmnt instead of NASA. Sure, NASA can put up a fight, or start a media support blitz, but they might end up cutting thier noses off.

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