9.32 particles, not 10 kilogram chunks of rock. It was decided that the TLA would have to be designed as an aerospace system, in order to achieve both accuracy and maintainability requirements. However, as a non-flight system, mass is of little importance except during initial transportation to the Moon, and the precise weight control exercised on aerospace vehicles could therefore be relaxed. This problem was to reoccur in the cases of lunar and space living quarters and the like, and the decision was made, somewhat arbitrarily, that the R&D costs associated with these non-flight aerospace systems would be reduced an order of magnitude from those of flight systems . The result was a standardized non-flight R&D cost of $2400 per kilogram. However, due to the TLA representing unknown technology, a real advance in the state of the art, a "risk" surcharge of 100% was placed on its R&D costs, bringing it to $4800 per kilogram. Using the NASA-Marshall analysis of the space colonization concept (9.16), which found a TLA mass of 1500 tons, the research and development costs of the lunar surface electromagnetic launcher are found to be $7.2 billion. Procurement costs associated with the TLA are costed on the same basis as the other aerospace systems, $1000 per kilogram. Track sections are specified in reference (9.10) as being 50 meters long, and while it is not clear that the sections are alike enough to justify R&D costing on the basis of one universally designed track section, it is assumed that the track sections are similar enough to "activate" the 80% learning curve. The track section is found to have a mass of 2.5 tons, resulting in an initial cost per track section of $25 million. Assuming a total track length of 30 kilometers, which was done in order to find the track section mass of 2.5 tons, it would take 600 SO-meter sections to make up the track. These 600 units applied to the learning curve would reduce the average cost per section to $475 thousand. The procurement cost for the TLA would then be $285 million. Refurbishment costs for the TLA are included in the costs of the lunar base operations.
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