A Case Study in NASA-DoD - The Black Vault

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Space Test Program position that its payloads always have a secondary
status, they are always taken to an altitude of 150 n mi by the shuttle;
solid rocket kick stages (not the IUS) are then used for translation
into the proper orbits. Both ETR and WTR launches of the shuttle are
considered. It has been assumed that the shuttle cost of $15.4 million
will be prorated by weight and that a service charge of $1 million per
launch will be made.
The number of spacecraft that would need to be procured for each
of four different procurement options is shown in Table 9. The four
options are:
all-STPSS, all-MMS, AEM plus STPSS, and AEM plus MMS.
An option consisting of all three types of spacecraft would not be
cost-effective in view of the magnitude of the nonrecurring cost associated
with providing the STPSS-P, given that the program already includes
the MMS.
Table 9
NUMBER OF SPACECRAFT
(Nominal case)
Spacecraft
Type
Procurement Options
STPSS MMS AEM/STPSS AEM/MMS
AEM 0 0 3 4
STPSS-S 0 0 0 0
STPSS-LC 19 0 16 0
STPSS-P 5 0 5 0
MMS 0 24 0 20
Total 24 24 24 24
It can be seen that the STPSS-S configuration is never procured
in the nominal case, because there are only a few payloads that can be
spin stabilized, and they are distributed over the eight different
orbits in such a way that it is always more costly to use an STPSS-S
spacecraft than to load up the STPSS-LC or STPSS-P spacecraft.
When
considering programs with a larger number of payloads, the spin configuration
is included in the procurement mix.