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It was actually 1.5 billion, and 100 million is a low ball figure for the cost of a shuttle launch.

Being a purely politically funded venture, nailing down the cost is difficult, but varies.

$300 million
$600 million
$500 million
$55 million incremental, $1.3 billion when you include facilities, research, engineering, etc...

If you take a rough midpoint and say $500 million per maintenance, the break even point would be three missions. Now, a huge portion of a satellite's cost is the R&D just to design the thing. If you produce multiple ones, the cost drops substantially. Produce multiple hubbles and soon they'd cost under a billion each. Meanwhile you can still do a great deal of updating on the ground.

I'll admit that I'd prefer to scrap the shuttle entirely, replacing it with boosters, dedicated personal carriers, and source maintenance missions from a space station. This would hopefully drastically reduce the cost of maintaining it, and might change the equations again.

Great thoughts! I totally agree with you! However, the only problem is this station is huge! In fact, according to the NASA Mission Page it's 404,069 pounds with a width Across Solar Arrays of 240 feet. It's 146 feet long from Destiny Lab to Zvezda; 171 feet with a Progress docked and 90 feet high!

Whilst if you take a peek at the Shuttle info page you'll find that the cargo bay is 60 ft long, 15 ft in diameter. so there's almost no way you could get that station anywhere inside the orbiter. The only possible way to get it down, is the same way we got it up there in the first place. Which means dismantling it ! I found a nice array of photos showing the process here.

I find the station has cost billions already and is a decade behind schedule. Here's a summary:
INITIAL DESIGN PAPERWORK -- $10 billion
HARDWARE -- $25 billion
SHUTTLE SERVICING COSTS -- $20 billion
MAINTENANCE -- $41 billion
YEAR 2001 COST OVERRUN (disclosed immediately AFTER the presidential election of 2000): $5 billion.

So, multiply this by two and you get the cost of bringing it down. Are you a tax payer? If so, I'm guessing you don't want to pay that :). Hope this clears the question of why they let sattelites burn up there too ... In case it doesn't, it costs around 2000 USD per pound to send a sattelite to space. It costs twice as much to recover it (sending an empty shuttle, a space walk, operating the hand, bringing it down) and we're taking a serious risk here, I mean, sending it up requires no humans, so if something goes wrong, we just blew up a few millions, but hey, if a shuttle explodes -- all hell breaks lose. So I say, leave them to burn out!

His honor Lord British may not have been able to front the cash when the bubble burst, but the $200k pricetag is a cost that break the bank of most everyone. Relative to current launch costs (upwards of $500 million for STS), $200k is a hell of a bargain. Rutan and his Scaled Composites is merely one of many private space initiatives with an eye defiantly set on the future. Space offers extreme opportunities in manufacturing, research, power generation, medical studies, propulsion research, materials science, and a multitude of other investment possibilities. I fully expect R&D of today will within a decade become reality.

We're at the very very beginning of an explosion of space-based enterprise; private spaceflight will be fueled first by corporate interests, and then, with costs more manageable for all, and only then, will the dream of visiting space be realized.

I, for one, eagerly await that day.

A LOT of what you posted makes sense. The only two potential objections that I might raise are: *NASA's annual budget is $16 billion. The fact that the cost of launching humans into space from the USA has gone nowhere but up over time is not particularly attributable to women as much as it is to the good ole' boys' network and the Shuttle huggers (i.e. pork-barrelers), right? *Lori Garver was the one who got NASA to propose competitive prizes to Congress (which squashed them the first time around, half a decade ago, in part because Dan Goldin didn't push the idea being the corrupt sort that he was). But upon that foundation, we have since made NASA prizes a reality. No engineer in Lori's place had previously done anything comparable. And I'm not aware that her predecessor Alan Ladwig is an engineer. I do know, though, that that Policy and Plans office was subsequently eliminated altogether. But the rest of what you said is RIGHT on the money. I guarantee you that you will enjoy this: http://www.spaceprojects.com/minority-contracts

This is news because SPACE matters much more. Here's why... First of all, we could probably repay our record high $8 trillion dollar national debt with the benefits resulting from less inefficient colonization efforts on the Moon and Mars. Such breakthroughs would pertain to energy production, the biotech sector, robotics, mining, chemistry, and telemedicine, etcetera. One also cannot overlook explorations exciting ability to potentially inspire students to eagerly embrace math & science like they did during the Apollo Era when folks like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos initially fell in love with such subjects. We could even learn to increasingly view others as fellow Earthlings, not enemies, while we struggle together against the shared hardships of the unknown. But we need structural (not personal) reforms at NASA to realize our potential: http://www.spaceprojects.com/reforms

I couldn't agree with you more. NASA has $10 million allocated and congressionally approved for competitive prizes this fiscal year, and yet less than $1 million has been allocated thus far. Even DARPA's Grand Challenge in October (autonomous robotic roving) is worth $2 million. Isn't it obvious that the bureaucrat statists and / or the pork barrelers in Congress FEAR this long overdue reform-fortification? Why won't NASA simply fortify its competitive prizes? Do we really need for central planners to decide what numerous competing teams nationwide could if only more of NASA's $16 billion dollar annual budget went to incentivizing them through prize offerings? For more details about this badly needed STRUCTURAL change at NASA: http://www.spaceprojects.com/prizes

Why won't NASA simply fortify its competitive prizes? Do we really need for central planners to decide what numerous competing teams nationwide could if only more of NASA's $16 billion dollar annual budget went to incentivizing them through prize offerings? NASA has $10 million allocated and congressionally approved for competitive prizes this fiscal year, and yet less than $1 million has been allocated thus far. Even DARPA's Grand Challenge in October (autonomous robotic roving) is worth $2 million. Isn't it obvious that the bureaucrat statists and / or the pork barrelers in Congress FEAR this long overdue reform? For more details about this badly needed STRUCTURAL change at NASA: http://www.spaceprojects.com/prizes

Space shuttle replacements

Hypersonic X-30 cancelled in 1993.

What happened to the X-33.
Cnn article on the troubles of the X-33
aerospike engine for x-33

BTW, rumor has it that Rutan eschews complex computer simulations in favor of testing real hardware models, so I don't think that your comment about NASA "having the benefit" of computers is even that valid.

What if the National Science Foundation got to directly and substantially compete with NASA, though? (As other examples there are also the Department of Defense (such as the Air Force or DARPA); the FAAs AST; and the NIH, etcetera.) The National Science Foundation has no research facilities of its own, and it conditions grant-awards on successful completion of a peer review process involving experts from academia, industry and the government. If the National Science Foundation (for example) got more funding allocated for its space endeavors along with the authorization to directly compete against NASA, it could utilize NASA centers as long as doing so withstands peer review scrutiny. This could boost NASA's public image, as people would be more likely to believe that whatever remains of NASA is not merely a product of executive or legislative pork-barreling, stacked evaluation boards, and bureaucratic inertia.

NASA's $13.6 billion annual budget dwarfs the $170 million budget for the National Science Foundation's space-related projects (which are presently focused merely on ground-based astronomy). The NSF therefore has to reject close to 75% of the space-related research proposals it receives. The Congressional Appropriations subcommittee on VA, HUD and Independent Agencies decides how much money it will allocate to both NASA and the National Science Foundation. Why not boost the NSF's space budget and, more significantly, broaden the scope of space activities for which future NSF money is earmarked? The NSF could already compete regarding funding nanotechnology research, space plasma investigations (related to nuclear fusion, for example), and microgravity studies. Does it really make sense to maintain the presently large budget discrepancy? source)

See, he doesn't want to get caught like poppy lacking the "vision thing".

But he is only following his fathers direction. You see in 1989, Bush made front page news by announcing .... A mars mission! By 2019! Link here.

Hmm, I frankly stunned at this new initiative. It surprises me that son immediately wanted to follow father into Iraq, and, now follow father with mars... I dunno I wouldn't go to far with the follow father thing...

-Sean

they are launching the cargo only missions to the ISS. Why does NASA need to do this now aside from some congressional handout pending?

The Space Station's Cost

INITIAL DESIGN PAPERWORK -- $10 billion
HARDWARE -- $25 billion
SHUTTLE SERVICING COSTS -- $20 billion
MAINTENANCE -- $41 billion
YEAR 2001 COST OVERRUN (disclosed immediately AFTER the presidential election of 2000): $5 billion.

Scrap the Shuttle Program

documents how the USA slipped to just 29% of the world's launch market share in the year 2000, even though we had 48% of it in 1996, and apparently all of it the decade before.

How did this happen if NASA has a larger space budget than all other civilian space agencies combined, as well as its Congressional mandate to: "seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space"? How did some countries evolve from non-players in space two decades ago into dominant commercial players today?

Perhaps NASA should build a "Sea Station" 1000 feet below the sea and use submarines to take foreigners and other salaried government tourists on "missions" to conduct "experiments" and set "endurance records" while "improving international relations". This idea may seem crazy, but it would be much cheaper than the shuttle program and accomplish just as much.

Imagine what could happen if the $4 billion a year and 30,000 shuttle experts were diverted to R&D?

I just can't help but feel the whole ISS and Shuttle Programs are a waste of money. I'm much rather see NASA's time and money spent researching other ways of getting into space.

First, read this. Yes, it is hearsay, but it will get you started on the issues involved with the current monopoly and the barrier put in place by NASA and the FAA. Also, look at this: The sad story of Beale Aerospace.

Second, I payed 50K to the feds last year. I wish it would all go to NASA. It does not. Even if it did - is NASA the best way to spend space money? What have they done in the last 30 years that is noteworthy? The space shuttle (no economy of scale, since they only built a few), the ISS (a nice experiment that takes almost the entire crew's time to maintain it, and they won't let more of them up there due to "safety reasons", even if they wanted to personally risk it). The moon shot destroyed NASA as a space agency, and made them into a beauracracy with budget problems, politics, pork barreling, and nice fiefdoms.

I wish it was as simple as "get the money and go". There are plenty of people with the money, but as long as the government controls the "permission" and protects their interests first....

Donut

There are/(were?) a number of space related tax reform bills currently before congress, i.e.
1) Invest in space now (of 2001)
2) Spaceport equality act (of 2001)
3) Zero gravity, zero tax act (of 2001)
4) Space tourism promotion act (of 2001)
5) The commercial spacepartnership act (inactive)
Read all about it here