Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Solving The Shuttles Problems?
Message-ID: <1990Oct3.184036.28901@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1990Oct1.160100.389@vaxa.strath.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 90 18:40:36 GMT

In article <1990Oct1.160100.389@vaxa.strath.ac.uk> cadp13@vaxa.strath.ac.uk writes:
> All the work necessary for the launch of a Space Shuttle, from the
>construction of the first frame section right through to painting the rather
>natty decals on the outside is contracted out. Financially, this is good.

No, financially it is bad, actually.  Doing it in-house usually costs less.
There are also quality implications.  Under Wernher von Braun, the first
few copies of every rocket were built in Huntsville, not at a contractor
plant, with gradual transition to contractors when production started.
(For the Saturn I, they didn't even pick the contractor until after the
first flight.)  Most everyone involved felt that NASA was better off with
its own in-house engineering facilities, so it wasn't forced to rely on
contractors for everything.

This attitude was very unpopular with the contractors.

Marshall's in-house engineering got the axe, pretty much completely, in the
post-Apollo cutbacks.

>... IF, instead of contracting,
>NASA were to employ people, whose SOLE concern was to get the crew up and down
>again safely, rather than the ever present bottom line, it would lead to a
>safer, more efficient launch system ...

Congress will not let you ignore the bottom line.  Sensibly so, too.
There is *no limit* to how much you can spend making the hardware just
a tiny bit safer.  Perfect safety is an illusion, but the law of diminishing
returns is not.  There comes a time when you have to decide that it's safe
enough and it's time to fly.  "For perfect safety... sit on a fence and
watch the birds." -Wilbur Wright.

-- 
Imagine life with OS/360 the standard  | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
operating system.  Now think about X.  |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry