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Google thinks a shuttle launch cost at least $450 million, for comparison.

• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• rplnt 8y ago
  It's really not something you can compare. Space Shuttle was not a can for humans to reach LEO. It was a much more capable spacecraft with a significantly bigger (both in volume and weight) payload.
  • isostatic 8y ago
    With an appropriate payload there were proposals for upto 80 people in the shuttle. At $450m to launch that would be $6m a seat.
    • iguy 8y ago
      Indeed, clearly not a head-to-head comparison, I just wanted to find some figure for the shuttle's cost. It's not clear to me what the 450 includes. I had not heard of this 80-person shuttle-bus, that sounds pretty crazy!
      • bluGill 8y ago
        It was in the plans back in the late 1970s/early 1980s. You can see it popular science of the past, along with a lot of other parts to the total shuttle system, very little of which was ever built. The basic idea is you can put lots of things in the cargo bay, parts to a space station (not the ISS, though the shuttle was used to build the ISS), a rocket to get from low earth orbit to something else, a bus for lots of people. I wonder how much was a serious proposal, and how much was an artist allowed to daydream.