overhead. Conversely, in the LRU options, facilities costs are a part of RDT&E. To obtain a proper comparison facilities, RDT&E and production costs must be added. The results are compared in Table 1. Woodcock indicates that nonrigorous techniques were used in the estimation of labor costs in the LRU study. This is not the case. The so-called “grass roots” technique was used only in the estimating of salaries of space workers. The primary LRU study estimating technique, like Woodcock's, was the use of cost estimating relationships based on historical data. The question of labor union activities in affecting labor rates is only one of many factors which may contribute to obtaining efficient space manufacturing costs. The primary issue is not less salary per worker but the fact that there are fewer workers in the space-based scenarios than for the terrestrially supported scenarios. The LRU study used 1500 people in space. The terrestrial model had many thousands (over 500,000) on Earth and approximately 500 to 1000 in space, in some cases. The LRU study does not imply that space workers will work for less than Earth workers. Salaries are a primary economic factor in space operations only if many more workers are required in space for the LRU approach than are required in space for the terrestrial baseline models. The Woodcock approach to determining “realistic” space manufacturing costs is to back out the labor assuming that the labor content does not change from Earth to space. The immediate question is Why bother backing out the labor if you have the costs already? Woodcock himself maintains that worker salaries are not a primary economic factor, so what is the objective of this particular discussion? The second question is How can one assume that the labor content does not change from Earth to space? The LRU study assumed that LRU manufacturing must be more automated than Earth based, thus the labor content is less. Using his method, it would take 82,000 workers for the LRU scenario. The LRU scenario employs a total of 1500-2000 space workers. The LRU economic analysis included a sensitivity study which Mr. Woodcock failed to mention. It took into account LRU cost variations (including personnel requirements) and their effect on the earth baseline comparison. The requirement for 82,000 space workers, however, was not one of the variations considered. New approaches toward the manufacture of SPS using NTM's should offer many advantages for space production. This was one of the major results of a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (5). The needs to design systems elements to
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