Ahouxa.110 net.space utzoo!decvax!duke!harpo!npois!houxi!houxa!sgk Thu May 6 10:13:40 1982 Hidden Shuttle Costs Most discussions of what it costs to put something into orbit are based on $/pound, in which case the shuttle is cheaper than standard boosters. What is sometimes forgetten, however, is that everything on the payload must be designed to shuttle standards, e.g., telemetry. The size constraints can also be a pain. One of the satellite people (sic) at APL told me that these constraints cause a lot of money in the design, both in terms of raw bucks and opportunity costs required to fit everything into the shuttle standard. Of course I don't have any figures, nor do I know the extent of these hidden costs, or how they apply to shuttle-based rather than merely shuttle-carried payloads. Any other info you folks out there may have would be interesting ... ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.