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The average cost of a space shuttle mission was $450m. That's 8 astronauts and 23,000kg of payload. [0] Soyuz costs $62.7m/seat. [1] Which means that 8 seats t
by warfangle 10y ago
The average cost of a space shuttle mission was $450m. That's 8 astronauts and 23,000kg of payload. [0]
Soyuz costs $62.7m/seat. [1] Which means that 8 seats to the ISS on soyuz is actually more expensive than a shuttle launch.
I couldn't find how much non-astronaut Soyuz payloads cost.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 Full Thrust can lift almost as much payload as the Shuttle, at 22,800kg.
I'm not sure how much each Falcon 9 launch to the ISS costs. Maybe someone else can chime in?
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program
1. http://www.space.com/20897-nasa-russia-astronaut-launches-2017.html http://www.space.com/20897-nasa-russia-astronaut-launches-20...
- InclinedPlane 10y agoNote that the incremental cost of a shuttle mission was $450 million, but that ignores the high fixed costs. Excluding sunk development costs the average price of a shuttle mission throughout the life of the program was a whopping $1.2 billion.
- jessriedel 10y agoOK, so that's a factor of 2.7, but not even halfway to a factor of 10. Sorry to be a stickler on this, but I like to use the ISS as an example of outrageously inefficient science, and so I'd like to make sure this isn't completely attributable to the cost of the shuttle (which, I think we agree, was it's own terrible boondoggle).
- baq 10y agoapproximately $150 million[1] though it was a couple of years ago, before the accident. probably the right ballpark. [1] http://www.parabolicarc.com/2016/07/11/upmass/ http://www.parabolicarc.com/2016/07/11/upmass/
- jessriedel 10y agoOf course, a man-rated Dragon trip will presumably cost significantly more.