The Cost of Mir and the ISS

[Bill Phil]

Actually, when it comes to mass to orbit, resupply is pretty easy. One Progress launch every few months would do the trick. And if you're recycling water, it's even easier. But you have to maintain that recycler, which can be simplified, but I assume it needs to be emptier from time of solids?

[PB666]

So lets get into the payload carrier statistics and scrape away some of the false and blatantly misleading information that has been presented here.

Space Shuttle (STS)

1. 135 manned missions with two pressure hull loses 1.48%

2. Approximately 820 individuals carried to or from space (counting the maximum either on launch or return), with 14 losses 1.7%

3. Failed missions 2, not counting minor failures

Here are the Soyuz statistics

1. 26 unmanned and 128 manned missions 2-fatal failures and a dozen or so unqualified failures (including 2 pressure hull loses where crew survived) - I counted 5 failures in the unmanned missions, so I have to break the two down to be fair. (I have generously included Russian era missions into this also

2. Unmanned missions 28 - 4 failures 3.5% (given the cryptic description there may have been others, or fewer)

3. Manned missions 128 - 198 people carried 4 fatal or would have been fatal without emergency mission termination. 3.125%

4. Personnel carried 333 - 4 fatalities 1.1%

Fisher exact test was performed on the results R1C1 4 R1C2 328 R2C1 14 R2C2 809

p = 0.373 there is ____no____ significant difference between crew loss rate of Soyuz and shuttle at alpha = 0.05

p = 0.081 there is a marginal (0.05 < alpha < 0.10) difference between the hull loss rate of soyuz versus shuttle. If we asked the question whether the shuttles hull loss rate was greater or equal there would be a test failure, indicating more study need to be done on hull loss rate of Soyuz. (because the Soyuz hull loss rate is higher)

If we exclude the unmanned Soyuz missions there is no significant difference between the hull loss rate either by single or 2 tailed testing.

So we can throw out these notions that the Soviet/Russian people carriers are safer or more reliable and focus on the relative economy.

[hugix]

Something that does belong in this topic, the manner in which the Russian MIR astronauts where payed was very dubious.

the cosmonauts got a big list with all the experiments to perform during their missions. And how much of the list they got checked of determined their salary. If they only got 90% of the list complete, they only received 90% of their salary.

This is mentioned in the Horizon episode on MIR (and it's accidents).

[GreenWolf]

So lets get into the payload carrier statistics and scrape away some of the false and blatantly misleading information that has been presented here.

Snipped.

First off, if we're comparing payload carriers, you want to look at launches of the Soyuz rocket, whichis used to launch both the Soyuz spacecraft and the Progress resupply craft. According to Space Launch Report, Soyuz has flown more than 860 times. (Link). And even if it does have safety record comparable to a shuttle (an assertion I find dubious), it's still far cheaper than the shuttle.

[PB666]

Something that does belong in this topic, the manner in which the Russian MIR astronauts where payed was very dubious.

the cosmonauts got a big list with all the experiments to perform during their missions. And how much of the list they got checked of determined their salary. If they only got 90% of the list complete, they only received 90% of their salary.

This is mentioned in the Horizon episode on MIR (and it's accidents).

And for good reason also, if one looks at the Soyuz missions many failed because the astronaut could not dock a space craft and they ran low on fuel. It got so bad that the Soviets instituted a policy that every docking mission had to have had an experienced cosmonaut that had been on a previous docking mission. Take a look at the photograph of the MIR Station.

Note this picture was taken by the Space Shuttle Atlantis . . . . .

At 7:37:11 a.m. Moscow time (MT), on 1994 January 14, Soyuz-TM 17 separated from the forward port of the Mir station. At 7:43:59 a.m., the Mission Control Center in Korolev (TsUP) ordered Tsibliyev to steer Soyuz-TM 17 to within 15 metres of the Kristall module to begin photography of the APAS-89 docking system. At 7:46:20 a.m., Tsibliyev complained that Soyuz-TM 17 was handling sluggishly. Serebrov, standing by for photography in the orbital module, then asked Tsibliyev to move the spacecraft out of the station plane because it was coming close to one of the solar arrays. In Mir, Viktor Afanasyev ordered Valeri Polyakov and Yuri Usachyov to evacuate to the Soyuz TM-18 spacecraft. At 7:47:30 a.m., controllers in the TsUP saw the image from Soyuz-TM 17’s external camera shake violently, and Serebrov reported that Soyuz-TM 17 had hit Mir. The TsUP then lost communications with Mir and Soyuz-TM 17.-WP

Its no wonder that private organization did not want to foot the bill to keep it going. Parts of the station were operating at 3 times their designed life, the coolant systems were leaking gas and there was not design to repair or replace the bad parts.

That was their main power supply module before they had to isolate it.

Needless to say the Soviets could have spent more money on flight training and docking training as well as docking simulators in the 70's and 80's

On the bright side, don't feel so bad when you knock those Gigantor solar panels off.

[prophet_01]

The fact alone that the ISS is international adds up a bunch of costs since you can't use scale effects. You have a number of agencies that pay for coexistent capabilities and infrastructure. A single agency with the combined budget can realise such a project a lot cheaper.

Multiple agencies may also lead to more political partners involved. Tge current conflict shows the extreme of it, but even small disagreements anddelays can drive up the price.

Different points of view on the goals of the project and how to achieve those are involved and make the planing and design more complex and also require the station to be more adaptive. Of the shelf is hard to realise if you have different docking systems or resuply crafts involved. +every agency has to adapt, which causes cost for every of those agencies -> again parallel cost of development

Also, the ISS needed extensive eva-construction on the main structure IIRC. That kind of technique has never been done at such a scale and thus had to developed and tested