I'm not the one claiming a cheaper price. According to the Planetary Society, it cost $49B to develop and launch the first Shuttle mission (in 2020 dollars).[1

I'm not the one claiming a cheaper price. According to the Planetary Society, it cost $49B to develop and launch the first Shuttle mission (in 2020 dollars).[1] According to Pielke and Byerly [2]: The US Congress and NASA spent more than US$192 billion (in 2010 dollars) on the shuttle from 1971 to 2010 (see 'A costly enterprise'). The agency launched 131 flights; two ended in tragedy with the loss of Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003. During the operational years from 1982 to 2010, the average cost per launch was about $1.2 billion. Over the life of the programme, this increases to about $1.5 billion per launch (R. A. Pielke Space Policy 10, 78–80; 1994). This is in 2010 dollars, but it doesn't even require adjusting for inflation to see the cost is far higher than your reporting. Each seat cost over $214M in 2010 dollars. Just for giggles, inflation since 2010 would bump that cost up to 272M per seat. It's fair to criticize Musk for toxic work environments at Tesla, and for generally being a Twitter douche. But SpaceX has been an extraordinary success. 1. https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/sts-program-development-cost https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/sts-program-developme... 2. https://www.nature.com/articles/472038d https://www.nature.com/articles/472038d