Criticism of the Space Shuttle program | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 26/03/2019

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_program


00:01:49 1 Purpose of the system
00:03:30 2 Costs
00:05:37 3 Cultural issues and problems
00:07:12 4 Shuttle operations
00:09:03 5 Accidents
00:12:02 6 Retrospect
00:15:17 7 See also



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SUMMARY
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Criticism of the Space Shuttle program stemmed from claims that NASA's Shuttle program failed to achieve its promised cost and utility goals, as well as design, cost, management, and safety issues. Fundamentally, it failed in the goal of reducing the cost of space access. Space Shuttle incremental per-pound launch costs ultimately turned out to be considerably higher than those of expendable launchers.By 2011, the incremental cost per flight of the Space Shuttle was estimated at $450 million, or $18,000 per kilogram (approximately $8,000 per pound) to low Earth orbit (LEO). By comparison, Russian Proton expendable cargo launchers (Atlas V rocket counterpart), still largely based on the design that dates back to 1965, are said to cost as little as $110 million, or around $5,000/kg (approximately $2,300 per pound) to LEO.
When all design and maintenance costs are taken into account, the final cost of the Space Shuttle program, averaged over all missions and adjusted for inflation, was estimated to come out to $1.5 billion per launch, or $60,000/kg (approximately $27,000 per pound) to LEO. This should be contrasted with the originally envisioned costs of $118 per pound of payload in 1972 dollars (approximately $635 per pound adjusting for inflation to 2011).It failed in the goal of achieving reliable access to space, partly due to multi-year interruptions in launches following Shuttle failures. NASA budget pressures caused by the chronically high NASA Space Shuttle program costs have eliminated NASA manned space flight beyond low earth orbit since Apollo, and severely curtailed use of unmanned probes. NASA's promotion of and reliance on the Shuttle slowed domestic commercial expendable launch vehicle (ELV) programs until after the 1986 Challenger disaster.