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People arguing oer shuttle costs on the net be usually arguing fromdifferent assumptions and do not describe their assumptions clearly,making it impossible to reach agreement. To demonstrate the difficulty,here ar a range of flight cost figures differing by a factor of 35 andsome of the assumptions behind them (all use 1992 constant dollars).     $45 one thousand million - marginal cost of adding or removing one flight from      the manifest in a given form.     $414 million - NASAs average cost/flight, assuming mean flight      rates are met and using current fiscal year data only.     $1 billion - operational costs since 1983 spread over the actual      number of flights.     $900 million - $1.35 billion - total (including development) costs      since the inauguration of the shuttle program, assuming 4 or 8 &nbs p    flights/year and trading operations ending in 2005 or 2010.     $1.6 billion - total costs by means of 1992 spread over the actual      number of flights through 1992.For more diminutive information, see the Aviation Week Forum article byRoger A. Pielke, younger "Space shuttlecock Value Open To Interpretation", July26, 1993, pg. 57. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SATURN V PLANS despite a widespread belief to the contrary, the Saturn V blueprintshave not been lost. They are kept at Marshall Space Flight Center onmicrofilm. The Federal Archives in East Point, GA also has 2900 cuboidfeet of Saturn documents. Rocketdyne has in its archives dozens ofvolumes from its Knowledge Retention Program. This effort was initiatedin the late 60s to document every facet of F-1 and J-2 engineproduction to assistant in any future re-start.The problem in re-creating the Saturn V is not finding the drawings, itis finding vendors who mess suppl y mid-1960s vintage hardware (like counselling system components), and the fact that the launch pads and VABhave been converted to Space Shuttle use, so you have no place to launchfrom.By the date you redesign to accommodate acquirable hardware and re-modifythe launch pads, you may as well have started from scratch with a cleansheet design. new(prenominal) referencesSeveral AIAA papers delivered in recent years discuss restorative theSaturn V. For example, AIAA paper 92-1546, "Launch Vehicles for theSpace Exploration Initiative". This paper reason that a revivedSaturn V was actually cheaper than the NLS vehicle.An overview of the infrastructure still available to support productionof a 1990s Saturn V and how that vehicle faculty be used to support FirstLunar Outpost missions can be found in the December 1993 issue of_Spaceflight_, published by the British Interplanetary Society.WHY DATA FROM SPACE MISSIONS ISNT IMMEDIATELY uncommitted