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voyager4d
Guest
Booban":s3dtka0a said:Well, Constellation was just to have something to do and put people in space the cheapest and most reliable way we know how until we develop something better. So cancel Constellation and it looks like you saved a lot of money. Oh, but they are STILL going to send people up in space, but with private rockets. Private rockets are also developed with a great deal of money which will be recouped with profit when they charge NASA for the rides. NASA will not have saved anything at all, except that the money will go into some rich peoples pockets.
lol. Are you for real? You think Ares 1 would be cheap?
All the numbers I have seen indicates that Ares 1 would cost over 1 billion $ pr launch, that is not what I would call cheap.
Some of the things that made Ares 1 expensive were:
1) Development: it was a new rocket and 1. time to use solid propellant rocket (without liquate) for human spaceflight. They still needed 4-7 years to complete it.
2) Low flyrate: It would only be used for human spaceflight, so only 2-5 launches pr year.
3) Big heavy solid rocket: Big solid rocket are expensive to transport because they are big (doh) and carry there propellant with them all the way from production (=heavy). There propellant is also bad for the environment (toxic).
And you think using Falcon 9 and Atlas 5 would be more expensive. Wahoo.
As far as I can see they will cost between 100 and 400 million $ pr launch.
They are cheaper because, the rockets have already been developed and they have/will have far higher fly rate than Ares 1 would ever have.