Slide 56 of 99
Notes:
NASA quickly formed a Space Station redesign team which had identified three major redesign options by April 1993. The most expensive “Option B” design was very similar to the 1991 “Fred” design shown above. Option B would have omitted one truss segment while simplifying some subsystems to save money. The Station assembly schedule would also have been delayed, and the project management structure would have been overhauled as well. . The total cost over five years could not be kept to under $9 billion, however, and this effectively killed the concept although Space Station Freedom supporters in Congress preferred this option.
Compared with Space Station Freedom, Option B would have saved some money by starting with half of the original design and grow to full size as the budget permits. Like Option A, Option B would initially have relied on a docked Shuttle to provide housing for the crew. However, "just going up for [less than 20] days and coming back...is nothing but Shuttle plus. It wouldn't be worth the money to do that" according to the Advisory Panel's Daniel Hastings. The completed Option B station would have offered better on-board data storage and lab space than Option A, but would also have required an additional 10 assembly flights and 60 hours of external assembly and maintenance work by astronauts. The technical risk was regarded as lower than for the other two Options, but the design still wasn't detailed enough for an accurate assessment of its user capabilities to be made.
