No, I don't. Because I know more about nuclear power than any single-topic page could tell me.
Nuclear power is not about the fuel, its about the reactors and how you handle them. Especially, how much of the fission products are in the reactor during operation - and that's mostly the same regardless of whether you're breeding your fuel from Thorium-232 or U-238. The supposed advantage of Thorium regarding waste is also mostly imaginary, as you could achieve qualitatively the exact same same results with Uranium, if you used the kind of reactors with Uranium that you have to use with Thorium anyway to make it work. (Namely, breeder reactors that have sufficient neutron economy to breed its own activation products into fissionable isotopes and fission them.)
It's not the solution to our energy problems, but it can replace a lot of stuff we currently do with coal, natural gas (to a lesser extend) and oil (to an even lesser extend) and be part of it. If we manage to agree on a system of storage that can last for the two to five centuries it takes fission products to decay to levels found in natural uranium ores.
I agree that that used to be true. But last year, the world consumed 50 million tons more grain than it produced. (Compare that to the 10mio tonnes of wheat lost due to the Russian centennial drought last year or the 5mio or so lost in Australia.)
Yes, distribution is an important factor, but the current crisis would not have happened, had surpluses not been burned and instead been put on the world market as they used to be. We're talking about doubling or tripling the prices of food staples over a 3-4 year period. We don't see this in our prices, because the price of wheat barely makes up a few percent of processed food prices.
Africa isn't just one of the poorest areas of the world, the continent is also the world's largest food importer - despite having fewer inhabitants than India or China. They are the first to feel increases in market prices. The Arab revolts in Northern Africa (while being the richest part of the continent, North African per-capita GDP is a mere $3000 compared to China's $4000) were at least partly triggered by hungry people being unable to afford buying food.
The greatest change of farming conditions around the world today, is the absurd willingness of industrialized countries to burn huge quantities of food. 140mio tons of maize are burned as ethanol in the USA alone - that's one quarter of the world maize harvest or 5% of the world coarse grain harvest. In order to provide less than 5% of the world population with about 1% of their primary energy needs.
Europe is burning similar amounts of "biofuels", so we're burning something on the order of 10% of the world's grain harvest - and people wonder why Somalians don't have enough money to buy food. More artificial demand through biofuels means higher prices, because when you burn food, food is getting scarce.
Basic economics.
We're killing people to save them from the "deadly effects" of global warming (and shove billions of dollars into farmers pockets who benefit a whole lot from the huge increase in food prices). And you'll wonder where the next Jihad came from...
In the sunnier parts of Germany, this solar panel will see no more than 1100 hour of sunlight per 8766 hour year. That factor alone lets the 60W plunge to 7.5W on average. However, you will only get them if you hold the panel at a right angle towards the sun all the time, but that's not what you do in a solar farm. Even if you you're able mount it at the optimal 40 degree angle, you'll lose about half the power due to that. So, you're already down to 4W for the panel.
Next, you have to mount and arrange the panels in a solar farm, half of which won't in fact be covered by panels. Look at real life examples - there are huge gaps between the panel rows and some more gaps between the panels. So, you're down to about 2W on average per panel plus empty real estate of the solar farm (per panel). The panel is only half a square meter in area, so you can expect getting 4W per square meter in a solar farm using this kind of panel in one of the sunnier parts of (eastern or southern) Germany.
Just look at the annual power production in kWh of a solar farm, divide it by the number of hours in a year and you know its average power production. Then, just find out the size of the farm and you'll usually find something in the area of 4W per square meter. Andasol gets about 10W, however, that's ignoring the power the plant needs to circulate the oil that's heated up, pumping of cooling water etc. They get a lot more sun there and they are further south and they partially track the sun.
However, if you want to build such a powerplant in the desert, you'll need access to cooling water which is evaporated in the cooling tower and you'll need more of it due to higher temperatures. The cooling water in Spain is basically free, in the desert, it's not. They say the want to desalinate sea water and pump it there eventually - but that's not currently part of the planning or cost calculations (which also ignore all maintenance, salaries/wages, replacement parts, financing etc and still end up at over 10cent per kWh - while claiming to get below 4 cent...)
There are several problems. The first is that those solar cells are fixed - the sun is (apparently) moving in the sky and basically never shines in a right angle on the cells. You have to consider both altitude and azimuth. Sun tracking helps a lot to increase efficiency, but is expensive and I'm not sure about reliability and maintenance.
The next problem is spacing. Have a look at a solar farm, there are large spaces between the panels to avoid having one panel casting a shadow on the others. That's eating roughly 50% of the area without generating power (can be more or less, depending on geography, mostly). - This is a somewhat smaller issue nearer to the equator. However, a minimum distance is absolutely required to allow for cleaning and maintenance. You can't have one football-field sized slap of solar cells after all. (And even that would have to angled towards the sun and reach tens of meters into the air.)
Next: Even along a rack, there are spaces between the individual panels, there are also the metal frames that are part of the panel, but don't generate electricity. Those two points alone reduce the generated power per area by 10-15%. The panels consist of lots cells cut out of the wafers and they aren't entirely filling the panel, also eating away at space (the exact amount depends on the construction of the panel). In order to actually get the power away from the cells, you need conductor wires that block part of the sunlight. My guess is that you lose another 10-15% because of those issues.
The efficiency of the solar cell is also just the efficiency of the bare silicon - but it's behind glass. Glass reflects about 4% of the sunlight at each surface (of which you have two). And that's before taking dust, dirt or snow-cover into account... (Ok, the latter is a bit rare in the Sahara).
I made those kinds of estimate to find out how much solar cells should be able to generate, without actually looking anything up. To my surprise, my result matched reality. - I really thought I underestimated the power that is left, because I was in such a really foul mood on that day, that at some point I came to my senses and thought I had gone much too far with the nitpicking... but I didn't.
We can make do with photovoltaics array covering 300000 square kilometers of unused, unpopulated Sahara desert to give us close to 20 terawatt output average,
No, it's closer to 2-3 TW on average in the real world. Unless you're using thin-film photovoltaics or something even worse, then you're getting on the order of 1TW on an area of that size. (The modern photovoltaic plants generate an average of 4W per square meter in Germany, thin film solar gets no more than 2W per square meter. I've assumed 10W per square meter for the 3TW figure.)
And that's before you consider the problem of sand eroding the surfaces. There is a reason why desertec isn't going into the deserts, but wants to build its power plants in the African Savanna. The huge cooling water requirements of solar thermal generation (about 6l/kWh) also play a role, which makes the project even more in(s)ane.
There are so many jobs tied up with the Shuttle, we have to keep it in service - no matter how little they actually do for society or how much it costs.
Well, the point is that these days the number of jobs is merely indicative of how much money you're wasting. In fact, given the macroeconomic situation of the US, this may do a whole lot more good than harm - but it's not because of the energy being produced, but because of the money being poured into the economy as a whole through the jobs.
Ten years down the line, however, this argument won't hold. Then it's a matter of is it economic or not. And given the actual observable progress of the technology (rather than the miracles being published every month or so), especially when it comes to the necessity of energy storage, it seems the solar industry will be blowing bubbles for a while, but stagnate well before supplying the quantities of power that the enthusiastic projections today envision.
Specifically, it will run into a brick wall some time before the point when solar peak power supply approaches power demand (which is at about 10%-20% of total power, depending on local energy storage) - it also depends on how much wind energy they have to share the grid with, as the same is true for wind power.
As for the rest, especially the copious amounts of oil and gas we're using in industrialized countries, we'll have to find other alternatives as well, instead of deluding ourselves about the capabilities of wind and solar. Mind you, they are significant. But we're lucky if we can get about one quarter or a third of all our energy needs out of them.
Still wrong.
It's all about commercial payloads, which usually go to the GTO - Geostationary Transition Orbit. The satellite will then use its own fuel to reach the geostationary orbit.
The increase in payload is all down to not needing an additional plane-change maneuver - which very taxing in terms of fuel - and some slight gains through additional rotational velocity of the earth at the equator.
The Soyuz payload to low earth orbit (LEO) is roughly 9t vs. 25t for the Shuttle.However, on average the Shuttle had a payload of less than 12t on board. It could carry a third stage in its cargo bay to lift satellites into GTO, but in this case the satellites were limited to something on the order of 3t - not much more than Soyuz.
Also, for comparison: An Ariane 5 can carry about 10t into GTO or 20t into LEO and costs about $200mio per launch. If Falcon Heavy works out as planned, it will carry up to 19t into GTO or 53t into LEO for $100mio (+/- 20%) per launch. Even if they miss the projected cost by a factor of two, it's still very competitive. (It helps a lot to build a rocket in one facility, instead of half a dozen or so in as many countries spread all over Europe and using standardized parts everywhere instead of differing technologies for each stage.)
Try to look up "price" and "cost" in a dictionary. The price of a Soyuz to a commercial costumer is much higher than its cost of about $30mio (which incidentally is its price to the Russian government). I know, the government paying less for something than commercial rates is an entirely foreign concept to Americans. Also, the price for NASA astronauts is significantly higher than for private space tourists, who paid between $20mio and $35mio each.
Also, I gave you all you needed to calculate the replacement of a Shuttle launch in terms of crew and payload. The skills required to get to whatever result you want don't go beyond addition and multiplication: One dragon to the ISS costs $100mio - you need two to replace a Shuttle mission's cargo. You'll need three seats in a Soyuz to replace the astronauts that the Shuttle actually brought to the ISS. $55mio each or $165mio to get the ISS crew into orbit in addition to $200mio for the cargo - in case you forgot. That's $365mio instead of the Shuttles $1500mio but you only have only brought three astronauts into orbit instead of the usual seven. You do, however, have 6 cosmonauts up there as well - but I guess those don't count.
You can probably strike a deal with the Russians to uselessly bring 4 more astronauts and 8 additional cosmonauts into orbit for $220mio and right back without staying on the ISS - just as the Shuttle did. But I don't see why you would want to do that or exactly what use they were in the previous Shuttle missions. However, the price for cargo ($200mio) plus 7 astronauts ($385mio) would then be $585mio to uselessly try and replicate a $1500mio Shuttle mission and giving 14 Russian cosmonauts a free ride into space as well.
Sorry, I grew up in a country where mental calculation is not a black art and you can reasonably expect people to be able to use it before accusing others of deliberate obfuscation.
But what your tortured numerology obscures is that while the 'waste' is less - much less is accomplished. The Shuttle could deliver 34klbs to the ISS, while Dragon delivers only 13klbs. Nor can Dragon provide crew exchange while delivering cargo. Nor can Dragon deliver modules. Nor can Dragon deliver experiment racks... (Shuttle can do all of this in a single flight!)
The last flight had 9,403 lbs of net payload on board (wrapped in the Rafaello module that was in the payload pay). Sure, Dragon is limited to some 6000 lbs of pressurized cargo - but it doesn't cost $1.5bn to launch. And trying to deliver both people and payload at the same time is why it is so expensive in the first place - that's anything but an advantage.
Two Dragon launches cost on the order of $200mio - if you don't reuse the Dragon. Seven astronaut tickets for the Soyuz cost some $55mio each - $385mio all told. (Btw. That's wildly overpriced. Launching a Soyuz spacecraft with 3 passengers costs on the order of $60mio. An American passenger basically pays for all three of them.) And that's before you consider that of the 7 astronauts on the Shuttle only 3 were going to or from the ISS and the other 4 were just along for the ride, not doing much that the others couldn't have done.
Furthermore, if you needed the shuttle to deliver modules to a space station, you should wonder how Mir was constructed. It's easy: you put some small, cheap engines on the module and launch it with a cheap, heavy duty rocket - and not an overpriced, fragile, manned shuttle.
It's true that you can't deliver standard experiment pallets with the Dragon - but a) the ATV and HTV can do that. There's little use for yet another system. b) Strangely enough, the Russians can make do without those standard racks on their part of the ISS and c) It's not the Dragons fault that the Shuttle is too expensive and NASA didn't even manage to provide a cheap alternative cargo transport in time, even though they knew they were phasing out the Shuttle and had enough time to do that.
Sure. But for the $8bn that the launch and service missions cost alone - without taking the cost of the upgrades or the telescope hardware into account - they could have build a fleet of at least half a dozen of those telescopes on the ground with proper optics, pay for their operation and launch costs and gotten away cheaper than they did with Hubble.
a) Please use metric units. We've lost one Mars mission because of that silliness (and others) already.
b) The payload of the Shuttle is mostly irrelevant. It brought an average of 11.6t into orbit. That's 25500 coconuts or something - far short of the maximum payload and in order to reach that average, it must have flown with no more than a few thousand pineapples mass in its cargo bay on a lot of occasions. Besides, ten Falcon Heavy will cost as much as a single Shuttle launch and each having a payload of one sperm whale or a dozen elephants - if there is an unexpected 50% cost overrun with the Falcon Heavy, that is.
c) When the Shuttle was used for transport duty, they put seven shaved apes into danger who had little else to do than twiddling their thumbs and pressing a button to lower the landing gear. (Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But damn it, if you want to get dead stuff into orbit, you don't bring people along for the ride unless you *really* have to.)
Proving reliability will be the main task of cargo delivery. 13 unmanned flights of the Dragon would be enough to do that. For perspective: that's twice as many unmanned test flights as the Shuttle, Apollo and Gemini had among them. However, first SpaceX must deliver. (That doesn't mean that none of those flights must fail. But they better come up with some very good analysis if one does. Especially, whether the crew could have bailed out or not.)
Reuse is a non-issue both in terms of cost and material. First of all: The Dragon is as reusable as the Shuttle. But: it requires a much smaller (probably non-reusable) rocket to get into space. What you see under the bottom line is not what you reused, but what you didn't.
Launching an 80t Space Shuttle (plus fuel and payload) wastes 2x90t in solid rocket boosters (plus fuel). Those could in theory be reused 20 times, but weren't (it's too costly to do). But even if those numbers had been reached, it would amount to 9t per flight. (In practice, it's on the order of 40t per flight). Then, you have to account for the external tank - 26.5t. The empty Falcon 9 weighs on the order of 30t - including tanks and engines to launch a 3t (or so) Dragon (plus fuel and payload).
So yes, the reuse quota is worse - but the amount of waste is less.
The shuttle also wasn't exactly maintenance free. Especially the SSME (main engines) had its turbo pumps replaced regularly and the engines themselves as well. 46 SSME were produced for 135 flights at a cost of $45mio per engine or $15mio per flight (plus cost for spare parts, disassembly, reassembly, check-ups of the engines after each flight etc. - no idea how much that cost, but given the labor-intensity of those tasks, it must have been millions for each flight). Add to that the cost of the solid rocket boosters, handcrafted tiles to replace the old ones etc...
But worst of all: The shuttle weighs 100t (with max payload) and carries only minuscule amounts of fuel itself. It can't reach higher orbits. In fact, the orbit that the Shuttle can reach is so low that the friction of the atmosphere necessitated regular lifting maneuvers that can now finally be reduced by 70-80% (fuel comprised a large part of the payload that the ISS has required so far) - by lifting the whole station into a 100km higher orbit (which is a trivial orbit to reach for any spacecraft, except for the Shuttle).
It's even worse for Hubble. It's in such a low orbit, that observations with it have been described by astronomers as akin to riding a bicycle over a cobble-stone road while trying to hold a telescope steady. And that's before you consider that it regularly has to deal with a huge planet getting into its field of view during observations. It could never reach its full potential (and you've seen what it did despite that!) And that wasn't at all necessary. The KH-11 spy satellites that have very similar dimensions and exactly the same optics as Hubble were flown into space using a Titan IIIE missle - which could have brought the telescope into a much higher and reasonable orbit.
For any regular rocket reaching a somewhat higher orbit is no problem because you get rid of the 2nd stage when you're in orbit. You can even replace the payload by a 3rd stage(*) - but the Shuttle itself is the second stage (minus the external tank, weighing about 1/3 of the shuttle) and has a hard time getting rid of itself.
(*) Yes, you can do that with the shuttle, but the results are laughable compared to the insanely huge rocket you're launching to do that. What's the point of launching a 2600t Shuttle in order to place the same amount of payload into a geostationary orbit as a 300t Soyuz rocket? Most of all: what's the point of risking the lives of 7 people to do what is regularly done with unmanned rockets?
... in addition to 10 people dieing in a train, another 200-300 died in other traffic accidents in China on the same day. If you ask me, I'd take the Chinese bullet train.
(China has 1.3bn people and 7.6 out of 100.000 die each year in traffic accidents.)
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No, I don't. Because I know more about nuclear power than any single-topic page could tell me.
Nuclear power is not about the fuel, its about the reactors and how you handle them. Especially, how much of the fission products are in the reactor during operation - and that's mostly the same regardless of whether you're breeding your fuel from Thorium-232 or U-238. The supposed advantage of Thorium regarding waste is also mostly imaginary, as you could achieve qualitatively the exact same same results with Uranium, if you used the kind of reactors with Uranium that you have to use with Thorium anyway to make it work. (Namely, breeder reactors that have sufficient neutron economy to breed its own activation products into fissionable isotopes and fission them.)
It's not the solution to our energy problems, but it can replace a lot of stuff we currently do with coal, natural gas (to a lesser extend) and oil (to an even lesser extend) and be part of it. If we manage to agree on a system of storage that can last for the two to five centuries it takes fission products to decay to levels found in natural uranium ores.
Currently there is no world shortage of food.
I agree that that used to be true. But last year, the world consumed 50 million tons more grain than it produced. (Compare that to the 10mio tonnes of wheat lost due to the Russian centennial drought last year or the 5mio or so lost in Australia.)
Yes, distribution is an important factor, but the current crisis would not have happened, had surpluses not been burned and instead been put on the world market as they used to be. We're talking about doubling or tripling the prices of food staples over a 3-4 year period. We don't see this in our prices, because the price of wheat barely makes up a few percent of processed food prices.
Africa isn't just one of the poorest areas of the world, the continent is also the world's largest food importer - despite having fewer inhabitants than India or China. They are the first to feel increases in market prices. The Arab revolts in Northern Africa (while being the richest part of the continent, North African per-capita GDP is a mere $3000 compared to China's $4000) were at least partly triggered by hungry people being unable to afford buying food.
Given that we're screwed anyway, could you please stop shouting?
Ok, fine. We're screwed. No matter how much you're shouting, we're still screwed. So, what? Why the shouting?
If you think the world will end anyway, get out of the way of those who disagree.
The greatest change of farming conditions around the world today, is the absurd willingness of industrialized countries to burn huge quantities of food. 140mio tons of maize are burned as ethanol in the USA alone - that's one quarter of the world maize harvest or 5% of the world coarse grain harvest. In order to provide less than 5% of the world population with about 1% of their primary energy needs.
...
Europe is burning similar amounts of "biofuels", so we're burning something on the order of 10% of the world's grain harvest - and people wonder why Somalians don't have enough money to buy food. More artificial demand through biofuels means higher prices, because when you burn food, food is getting scarce.
Basic economics.
We're killing people to save them from the "deadly effects" of global warming (and shove billions of dollars into farmers pockets who benefit a whole lot from the huge increase in food prices). And you'll wonder where the next Jihad came from
In the sunnier parts of Germany, this solar panel will see no more than 1100 hour of sunlight per 8766 hour year. That factor alone lets the 60W plunge to 7.5W on average. However, you will only get them if you hold the panel at a right angle towards the sun all the time, but that's not what you do in a solar farm. Even if you you're able mount it at the optimal 40 degree angle, you'll lose about half the power due to that. So, you're already down to 4W for the panel.
...)
Next, you have to mount and arrange the panels in a solar farm, half of which won't in fact be covered by panels. Look at real life examples - there are huge gaps between the panel rows and some more gaps between the panels. So, you're down to about 2W on average per panel plus empty real estate of the solar farm (per panel). The panel is only half a square meter in area, so you can expect getting 4W per square meter in a solar farm using this kind of panel in one of the sunnier parts of (eastern or southern) Germany.
Just look at the annual power production in kWh of a solar farm, divide it by the number of hours in a year and you know its average power production. Then, just find out the size of the farm and you'll usually find something in the area of 4W per square meter. Andasol gets about 10W, however, that's ignoring the power the plant needs to circulate the oil that's heated up, pumping of cooling water etc. They get a lot more sun there and they are further south and they partially track the sun.
However, if you want to build such a powerplant in the desert, you'll need access to cooling water which is evaporated in the cooling tower and you'll need more of it due to higher temperatures. The cooling water in Spain is basically free, in the desert, it's not. They say the want to desalinate sea water and pump it there eventually - but that's not currently part of the planning or cost calculations (which also ignore all maintenance, salaries/wages, replacement parts, financing etc and still end up at over 10cent per kWh - while claiming to get below 4 cent
There are several problems. The first is that those solar cells are fixed - the sun is (apparently) moving in the sky and basically never shines in a right angle on the cells. You have to consider both altitude and azimuth. Sun tracking helps a lot to increase efficiency, but is expensive and I'm not sure about reliability and maintenance.
... (Ok, the latter is a bit rare in the Sahara).
... but I didn't.
The next problem is spacing. Have a look at a solar farm, there are large spaces between the panels to avoid having one panel casting a shadow on the others. That's eating roughly 50% of the area without generating power (can be more or less, depending on geography, mostly). - This is a somewhat smaller issue nearer to the equator. However, a minimum distance is absolutely required to allow for cleaning and maintenance. You can't have one football-field sized slap of solar cells after all. (And even that would have to angled towards the sun and reach tens of meters into the air.)
Next: Even along a rack, there are spaces between the individual panels, there are also the metal frames that are part of the panel, but don't generate electricity. Those two points alone reduce the generated power per area by 10-15%. The panels consist of lots cells cut out of the wafers and they aren't entirely filling the panel, also eating away at space (the exact amount depends on the construction of the panel). In order to actually get the power away from the cells, you need conductor wires that block part of the sunlight. My guess is that you lose another 10-15% because of those issues.
The efficiency of the solar cell is also just the efficiency of the bare silicon - but it's behind glass. Glass reflects about 4% of the sunlight at each surface (of which you have two). And that's before taking dust, dirt or snow-cover into account
I made those kinds of estimate to find out how much solar cells should be able to generate, without actually looking anything up. To my surprise, my result matched reality. - I really thought I underestimated the power that is left, because I was in such a really foul mood on that day, that at some point I came to my senses and thought I had gone much too far with the nitpicking
We can make do with photovoltaics array covering 300000 square kilometers of unused, unpopulated Sahara desert to give us close to 20 terawatt output average,
No, it's closer to 2-3 TW on average in the real world. Unless you're using thin-film photovoltaics or something even worse, then you're getting on the order of 1TW on an area of that size. (The modern photovoltaic plants generate an average of 4W per square meter in Germany, thin film solar gets no more than 2W per square meter. I've assumed 10W per square meter for the 3TW figure.)
And that's before you consider the problem of sand eroding the surfaces. There is a reason why desertec isn't going into the deserts, but wants to build its power plants in the African Savanna. The huge cooling water requirements of solar thermal generation (about 6l/kWh) also play a role, which makes the project even more in(s)ane.
There are so many jobs tied up with the Shuttle, we have to keep it in service - no matter how little they actually do for society or how much it costs.
Well, the point is that these days the number of jobs is merely indicative of how much money you're wasting. In fact, given the macroeconomic situation of the US, this may do a whole lot more good than harm - but it's not because of the energy being produced, but because of the money being poured into the economy as a whole through the jobs.
Ten years down the line, however, this argument won't hold. Then it's a matter of is it economic or not. And given the actual observable progress of the technology (rather than the miracles being published every month or so), especially when it comes to the necessity of energy storage, it seems the solar industry will be blowing bubbles for a while, but stagnate well before supplying the quantities of power that the enthusiastic projections today envision.
Specifically, it will run into a brick wall some time before the point when solar peak power supply approaches power demand (which is at about 10%-20% of total power, depending on local energy storage) - it also depends on how much wind energy they have to share the grid with, as the same is true for wind power.
As for the rest, especially the copious amounts of oil and gas we're using in industrialized countries, we'll have to find other alternatives as well, instead of deluding ourselves about the capabilities of wind and solar. Mind you, they are significant. But we're lucky if we can get about one quarter or a third of all our energy needs out of them.
Still wrong. It's all about commercial payloads, which usually go to the GTO - Geostationary Transition Orbit. The satellite will then use its own fuel to reach the geostationary orbit.
The increase in payload is all down to not needing an additional plane-change maneuver - which very taxing in terms of fuel - and some slight gains through additional rotational velocity of the earth at the equator.
The Soyuz payload to low earth orbit (LEO) is roughly 9t vs. 25t for the Shuttle.However, on average the Shuttle had a payload of less than 12t on board. It could carry a third stage in its cargo bay to lift satellites into GTO, but in this case the satellites were limited to something on the order of 3t - not much more than Soyuz.
Also, for comparison: An Ariane 5 can carry about 10t into GTO or 20t into LEO and costs about $200mio per launch. If Falcon Heavy works out as planned, it will carry up to 19t into GTO or 53t into LEO for $100mio (+/- 20%) per launch. Even if they miss the projected cost by a factor of two, it's still very competitive. (It helps a lot to build a rocket in one facility, instead of half a dozen or so in as many countries spread all over Europe and using standardized parts everywhere instead of differing technologies for each stage.)
Try to look up "price" and "cost" in a dictionary. The price of a Soyuz to a commercial costumer is much higher than its cost of about $30mio (which incidentally is its price to the Russian government). I know, the government paying less for something than commercial rates is an entirely foreign concept to Americans. Also, the price for NASA astronauts is significantly higher than for private space tourists, who paid between $20mio and $35mio each.
Also, I gave you all you needed to calculate the replacement of a Shuttle launch in terms of crew and payload. The skills required to get to whatever result you want don't go beyond addition and multiplication: One dragon to the ISS costs $100mio - you need two to replace a Shuttle mission's cargo. You'll need three seats in a Soyuz to replace the astronauts that the Shuttle actually brought to the ISS. $55mio each or $165mio to get the ISS crew into orbit in addition to $200mio for the cargo - in case you forgot. That's $365mio instead of the Shuttles $1500mio but you only have only brought three astronauts into orbit instead of the usual seven. You do, however, have 6 cosmonauts up there as well - but I guess those don't count.
You can probably strike a deal with the Russians to uselessly bring 4 more astronauts and 8 additional cosmonauts into orbit for $220mio and right back without staying on the ISS - just as the Shuttle did. But I don't see why you would want to do that or exactly what use they were in the previous Shuttle missions. However, the price for cargo ($200mio) plus 7 astronauts ($385mio) would then be $585mio to uselessly try and replicate a $1500mio Shuttle mission and giving 14 Russian cosmonauts a free ride into space as well.
Sorry, I grew up in a country where mental calculation is not a black art and you can reasonably expect people to be able to use it before accusing others of deliberate obfuscation.
But what your tortured numerology obscures is that while the 'waste' is less - much less is accomplished. The Shuttle could deliver 34klbs to the ISS, while Dragon delivers only 13klbs. Nor can Dragon provide crew exchange while delivering cargo. Nor can Dragon deliver modules. Nor can Dragon deliver experiment racks... (Shuttle can do all of this in a single flight!)
The last flight had 9,403 lbs of net payload on board (wrapped in the Rafaello module that was in the payload pay). Sure, Dragon is limited to some 6000 lbs of pressurized cargo - but it doesn't cost $1.5bn to launch. And trying to deliver both people and payload at the same time is why it is so expensive in the first place - that's anything but an advantage.
Two Dragon launches cost on the order of $200mio - if you don't reuse the Dragon. Seven astronaut tickets for the Soyuz cost some $55mio each - $385mio all told. (Btw. That's wildly overpriced. Launching a Soyuz spacecraft with 3 passengers costs on the order of $60mio. An American passenger basically pays for all three of them.) And that's before you consider that of the 7 astronauts on the Shuttle only 3 were going to or from the ISS and the other 4 were just along for the ride, not doing much that the others couldn't have done.
Furthermore, if you needed the shuttle to deliver modules to a space station, you should wonder how Mir was constructed. It's easy: you put some small, cheap engines on the module and launch it with a cheap, heavy duty rocket - and not an overpriced, fragile, manned shuttle.
It's true that you can't deliver standard experiment pallets with the Dragon - but a) the ATV and HTV can do that. There's little use for yet another system. b) Strangely enough, the Russians can make do without those standard racks on their part of the ISS and c) It's not the Dragons fault that the Shuttle is too expensive and NASA didn't even manage to provide a cheap alternative cargo transport in time, even though they knew they were phasing out the Shuttle and had enough time to do that.
Sure.
But for the $8bn that the launch and service missions cost alone - without taking the cost of the upgrades or the telescope hardware into account - they could have build a fleet of at least half a dozen of those telescopes on the ground with proper optics, pay for their operation and launch costs and gotten away cheaper than they did with Hubble.
To answer an anonymous American coward:
a) Please use metric units. We've lost one Mars mission because of that silliness (and others) already.
b) The payload of the Shuttle is mostly irrelevant. It brought an average of 11.6t into orbit. That's 25500 coconuts or something - far short of the maximum payload and in order to reach that average, it must have flown with no more than a few thousand pineapples mass in its cargo bay on a lot of occasions. Besides, ten Falcon Heavy will cost as much as a single Shuttle launch and each having a payload of one sperm whale or a dozen elephants - if there is an unexpected 50% cost overrun with the Falcon Heavy, that is.
c) When the Shuttle was used for transport duty, they put seven shaved apes into danger who had little else to do than twiddling their thumbs and pressing a button to lower the landing gear. (Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But damn it, if you want to get dead stuff into orbit, you don't bring people along for the ride unless you *really* have to.)
Proving reliability will be the main task of cargo delivery. 13 unmanned flights of the Dragon would be enough to do that. For perspective: that's twice as many unmanned test flights as the Shuttle, Apollo and Gemini had among them. However, first SpaceX must deliver. (That doesn't mean that none of those flights must fail. But they better come up with some very good analysis if one does. Especially, whether the crew could have bailed out or not.)
...
Reuse is a non-issue both in terms of cost and material. First of all: The Dragon is as reusable as the Shuttle. But: it requires a much smaller (probably non-reusable) rocket to get into space. What you see under the bottom line is not what you reused, but what you didn't.
Launching an 80t Space Shuttle (plus fuel and payload) wastes 2x90t in solid rocket boosters (plus fuel). Those could in theory be reused 20 times, but weren't (it's too costly to do). But even if those numbers had been reached, it would amount to 9t per flight. (In practice, it's on the order of 40t per flight). Then, you have to account for the external tank - 26.5t. The empty Falcon 9 weighs on the order of 30t - including tanks and engines to launch a 3t (or so) Dragon (plus fuel and payload).
So yes, the reuse quota is worse - but the amount of waste is less.
The shuttle also wasn't exactly maintenance free. Especially the SSME (main engines) had its turbo pumps replaced regularly and the engines themselves as well. 46 SSME were produced for 135 flights at a cost of $45mio per engine or $15mio per flight (plus cost for spare parts, disassembly, reassembly, check-ups of the engines after each flight etc. - no idea how much that cost, but given the labor-intensity of those tasks, it must have been millions for each flight). Add to that the cost of the solid rocket boosters, handcrafted tiles to replace the old ones etc
But worst of all: The shuttle weighs 100t (with max payload) and carries only minuscule amounts of fuel itself. It can't reach higher orbits. In fact, the orbit that the Shuttle can reach is so low that the friction of the atmosphere necessitated regular lifting maneuvers that can now finally be reduced by 70-80% (fuel comprised a large part of the payload that the ISS has required so far) - by lifting the whole station into a 100km higher orbit (which is a trivial orbit to reach for any spacecraft, except for the Shuttle).
It's even worse for Hubble. It's in such a low orbit, that observations with it have been described by astronomers as akin to riding a bicycle over a cobble-stone road while trying to hold a telescope steady. And that's before you consider that it regularly has to deal with a huge planet getting into its field of view during observations. It could never reach its full potential (and you've seen what it did despite that!) And that wasn't at all necessary. The KH-11 spy satellites that have very similar dimensions and exactly the same optics as Hubble were flown into space using a Titan IIIE missle - which could have brought the telescope into a much higher and reasonable orbit.
For any regular rocket reaching a somewhat higher orbit is no problem because you get rid of the 2nd stage when you're in orbit. You can even replace the payload by a 3rd stage(*) - but the Shuttle itself is the second stage (minus the external tank, weighing about 1/3 of the shuttle) and has a hard time getting rid of itself.
(*) Yes, you can do that with the shuttle, but the results are laughable compared to the insanely huge rocket you're launching to do that. What's the point of launching a 2600t Shuttle in order to place the same amount of payload into a geostationary orbit as a 300t Soyuz rocket? Most of all: what's the point of risking the lives of 7 people to do what is regularly done with unmanned rockets?
... in addition to 10 people dieing in a train, another 200-300 died in other traffic accidents in China on the same day. If you ask me, I'd take the Chinese bullet train. (China has 1.3bn people and 7.6 out of 100.000 die each year in traffic accidents.)