Building Saturn V's at low volume under the standard cost-plus arrangements that NASA uses with Boeing et al would result in steadily increasing costs.
Except we didn't, because we took absurdly high-end engines (RS-25s) that were designed for reuse and refurbishment and now we drop them in the ocean after every launch.
RS-25s were the three main engines. They were very expensive, designed for reuse and were recovered with the rest of the orbiter they were bolted on to. Then refurbished with a much greater amount of effort and money than initially expected, and eventually reused on a future mission..
The SLS uses two similar boosters and FOUR of that same(-ish) engine design. The boosters can be recovered just like before. But the first stage doesn't fly itself back to Cape Canaveral after 2 weeks like the Shuttle did. So those four very expensive "reusable" engines are chucked into the ocean never to be seen again.
The shuttle's SRB's were fished out, refurbed, refueled, and reflown.
The SLS's SRB's are left to sink to the bottom.
https://space.stackexchange.com/a/45894
Basically the SRB had multiple modules and some were more reusable than others, so some got recovered and refurbished a lot more.
>it would cost $23 million to refurbish a used SRB and $12~70 million to refuel it.
A unconfirmed sources, that worked at NASA claim that Thikol employee explained to him. That reuse cost 3 time more, than a expendable SRB https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=51959.0
The space shuttle had something like 1:70 in practise but was planned for 1:90. Artemis is currently evaluated at 1:70 too, which is deemed a little too high.
We seem to be ready to sacrifice people to space at a relatively high cadence.
Today, NASA as an institution has learned nothing from it. Their heat shield for Orion is defective and they tried to cover it up instead of admitting the problem. They're still proceeding under the assumption that they can simply ignore the hear shield not performing as designed if they use a different reentry profile, which they intend to do without first testing this theory.
Compared to what? You're measuring against perfection. That's retarded.
Please leave your insults at home when you go on the internet.
If people are willing, is it even an issue?
You gotta crack a few eggs to make an omlette.
I'm not sure our tolerance is as high as you think. Maybe it was in the 1960s, but not now. And who knows what a couple big pyrotechnic accidents would have produced then.
I do agree with you, we're much more willing to tolerate carnage on the ground (or closer to it). More astronauts have died in aircraft accidents than spacecraft accidents.
I won't say they weren't capable or reliable, but what made rockets affordable was the privatization effort that happened after the USA, under the careful stewardship of NASA and those MIC corporations, lost the ability to send astronauts to space for the first time in 50 years, and was humiliatingly forced to rely on Russia for its astronaut launch services, even using Russian rocket engines for launching payloads of important national security and economic importance.
Yes, under government run projects.
The change in direction from the administration around the Obama administration is considered privatization / commercialization of space launch services not because private companies are now involved in building rockets, but because the projects are largely private, and the government mainly bids for services not rocket construction.
To whom are you directing your advice, then? This is like those articles headlined "Donald Trump must resign" -- who is supposed to make that happen? Who with any power over this situation is going to change their mind as a result of that article? Keeping senators and congress happy is literally the point of these programs, no?
It would be better to develop technology at a smaller scale, being able to iterate more, both in more paths explored per dollar and per year.
In that sense DC-X and the lunar lander challenge were on to something, as was Fastrac. Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Starship then continued from there. (Spaceshipone and hybrids were a dead end.)
the Saturn Vs were hand-welded but large numbers of welders; we can't even build one today because there is no workforce of skilled welders remaining. And avionics I don't think contributed substantially to the Saturn V's weight.
I think SpaceX's iteratively improved process is what produces the capable affordable machine.
Could you imagine the unit cost today, if we kept building Saturn V in an iteratively improving process? Even as an expendable rocket, the efficiencies from mass production and weight savings from miniaturizing avionics would have produced a very capable, affordable machine.