9.30 are paid within the space shuttle program, and are not charged to the DOL. The remaining 12285 kg, the expendable mass of the vehicle, must be developed and paid for by the DOL program. Standard practice in aerospace systems analysis is to break down such R&D costs into cost per kilogram of assembly mass. Koelle (9.13) shows that costs for research and development of aerospace products generally run between $10,800 and $57,000 per kilogram. As might be expected, cost per unit mass drops as the individual assembly mass increases, and for masses on the order of 50 tons Koelle quotes an R&D price of $11,000 per kilogram. However, this is complicated by the fact that the figures as expressed by Koelle are in constant 1960 dollars. The conversion factor for aerospace mechanisms is not clear, due to the increased knowledge in the field, advancement in the state of the art, and inflation over the last 16 years. Therefore, an average yearly inflation rate of 5% will be assumed. This 5% rate, compounded over 16 years, gives a conversion factor of 2.18 between constant 1960 and constant 1976 dollars. The research and development costs used in this analysis are therefore set at $24,000 per kilogram, expressed in constant 1976 dollars. Using this R&D rate, the research and development costs for the deploy only launcher are found to be $295 million. Operational costs of the DOL should be similar to those of the space shuttle, since the same direct and indirect costs are applicable to both, due to the commonality of major systems. Therefore, the base DOL initial mission cost is the same $89.7 million per flight that was previously found for the shuttle. However, the actual DOL initial mission cost must be increased over this base cost to account for the launch expendable mass. Again from Koelle, the initial procurement cost for a space system, converted to 1976 dollars, is $1000 per kilogram. As the production run increases, the average cost per kilogram of system decreases along an 80% learning curve. When the total number of DOL flights is found later in this chapter, the average unit costs of the 12285 kg of nonreusable mass per flight will be added to the base mission cost to determine DOL launch costs.
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