It should almost go without saying. The Shuttle was one of the most expensive launch vehicles in history. There are several helpful counterpoints to hand thoug

It should almost go without saying. The Shuttle was one of the most expensive launch vehicles in history. There are several helpful counterpoints to hand though. Two being the history Russian and Chinese space stations. All of them, including the Russian components of the ISS, have been vastly less expensive per module than the US components of ISS. Even if you factor in building and launching modules by US standards on US rockets it's still vastly less expensive than using the Shuttle. Moreover, we've already seen that it's possible for US companies to deliver spacecraft to the ISS in the commercial cargo program. It would actually be just as easy to deliver components to the station using similar systems for about the same cost as a cargo launch today (around $150 mil at the high end). Over the roughly 2 dozen assembly flights for the Shuttle assembled side of the ISS that works out to an equivalent cost of about $4 billion, plus extra module construction costs. Keeping in mind that such flights have already been used or are being planned to use for adding modules to the ISS (such as BEAM and IDA).