9.42 The three major components of the hull are the hull sections, with a mass of 121 tons each, the bulkheads, massing 24 tons each, and the major stiffeners, with a mass of 1.4 metric tons apiece. However, keeping in mind the qualitative nature of the assumptions just made, and the fact that people's lives would depend on the colony for a period of 30 years, it was decided to cost the R&D of these elements on the same basis as a flight vehicle. Therefore, the highest research and development charge rate of $24,000 per kilogram was applied to those 146.4 tons, giving a total colony R&D cost of $3514 million. Labor costs consist of training and wages. The initial training cost of orbital workers is $1 million per person. However, this cost follows an 80% learning curve (9.19) ,(9.20). Total number of workmen trained can be found by using the number of personnel transfers in Table 9.4, and assuming each workman spends a total of one year in space. From the same sources, the standard wage for space workers is $100,000 per year, which includes ground-based overhead costs. IX.6: PROGRAM COSTS With the derivation of transport schedules, sufficient information exists to allow a line item costing of the entire prototype space colony program. Based on the schedules listed in Table 9.5, it seems logical to plan on an OTV fleet of 4 vehicles (2 for L-5 missions and 2 for lunar orbit transfers), and 2 lunar landing vehicles. This creates the'heed for 4 space shuttle missions in program year 6, in order to launch and assemble the transfer vehicles. This brings the total number of space shuttle missions to 1764, or 2346 including the current 582 mission traffic plan. Using this and the initial mission cost of $89.7 million, found in Section IX.2, the average shuttle mission cost with an 80% learning curve is $11.0 million. In current plans, 5 orbiters will fly 582 missions, or 117 flights/ orbiter. Holding this constant, the orbiter fleet must be expanded to 21 vehicles to allow for 2346 missions. Learning curve
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==