The space community finally seems to be coming to terms with the
fact that the President’s new space initiative requires the
development of some kind of heavy-lift booster, one much more
capable than the existing Delta 4H and Atlas 5H vehicles. But
the question remains: what kind of booster? A popular answer is:
a Shuttle-Derived Vehicle (SDV), similar to the Shuttle-C and
Shuttle-Z proposals of years gone by. This notion has a lot of
superficial attractions — especially to those people who earn
their living by serving in the great army of Shuttle support
personnel. But if you study it a little, it becomes clear that
this idea has severe drawbacks. First, note that many SDV
promoters are under-estimating the current cost of Shuttle
launches by a factor of ~2. NASA has traditionally used a phony
cost accounting system in which the salaries of civil service
personnel and facilities support are not allocated to specific
projects. Sean O’Keefe has finally forced the universal adoption
of full-cost accounting thro