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Comment by codeulike | Hacker News Reader

Bear in mind that per-kg-to-orbit, the Falcon Heavy is 50 times cheaper than the Space Shuttle.

edit: I think thats based on programme lifetime costs, if you look at incremental costs per launch its about 12 times cheaper -see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18706930

edit: OK maybe not the best two things to compare (although the original vision for the space shuttle was that it would launch all US payloads, due to projected re-usability). But FH is still way cheaper than any contemporary competitors, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18706762

edit: I've been looking at old pics of the space shuttle and lamenting that its the only thing we've ever put into space that actually looked like a proper spaceship. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-13719297/u...

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The Shuttle was expensive, but its abilities are still unmatched. No other spacecraft has ever been able to launch a half dozen people into orbit, capture a satellite, and return it to earth for repairs. That kind of world leading, "best at any cost" mentality is what made the US so technologically dominant globally from the 1950s until recently. Falcon Heavy is definitely more efficient for getting things into orbit, but it still feels frustrating knowing that regardless of cost, we can't actually do the things we used to be able to.

> No other spacecraft has ever been able to launch a half dozen people into orbit, capture a satellite, and return it to earth for repairs.

The problem is that almost everything Space Shuttle could do, could have been done more effectively by a classic modular spacecraft and a large rocket. Even more, Space Shuttle was fairly limited and inflexible in its capabilities due to its complex in-orbit thermodynamics, monolithic design and available delta-v. Jack of all trades, master of none.

Don't get me wrong, the Shuttle was a great engineering achievement and a great pride point for any American. But it's also a huge waste of resources, which resulted from enormously inflated requirements, particularly military ones. Buran was the same. It's better not to repeat such mistakes.

> That kind of world leading, "best at any cost" mentality is what made the US so technologically dominant globally from the 1950s until recently.

And left it without modular space stations, in this particular case. (and many more)

It's abilities at killing astronauts are unmatched too... I don't see why people still think positively of the shuttle program after all the lives that were lost. It's like people fawning over how great the Titanic was.

The shuttle failed at a number of rather important things, that one, price, refurbishment time, etc.

It still managed to do some pretty spectacular things no one else had ever done. I think that's worth something. I think the people who gave their lives thought that was worth something. I think they would rather the program be remembered for its triumphs than its failures.

"The average age the night we had splashdown (Apollo 11) was 28. When Space Shuttle Atlantis left Earth on May 11, 2009, the average NASA civil servant's age was 47." [1]

There were risk takers, now they are protecting their ability to pay for 2 kids to go to Ivy League. Who can blame them?

[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a4288/4318625/

The shuttle isn't really designed to put basic stuff in space so it's not quite a fair comparison. Better comparison would be other, similar rockets.

> it's not quite a fair comparison

Mass is mass. It’s a perfectly fair comparison. If we were talking about people, sure, that would be unfair.

The whole purpose of the Space Shuttle was to put people into space (and bring them back). The only payloads it carried were those requiring human intervention to deploy. The Falcon 9 can only lift payloads that do not require human intervention.

We can pretty much launch anything now without physical human interaction in space. The ISS needs help guiding things into place but tech is getting better so it will not be long until the resupply ships and modules can be automatically guided into place.

You could argue that the humans were on there to make it re-useable. No way to land without humans in the 80s.

Buran (the Soviet version of Shuttle) did land without humans in 1988.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

Ballistic reentry doesn't really require any human intervention. The Russians have been doing it that way since Yuri. The craft wasn't reusable but it is so simple that you can build another for probably the same price of recertifying an old one.

Making a manned, multi-purpose vehicle like the Shuttle really starts to get expensive when you just want to launch a big satellite. Sure, they perform a bunch of science up there but that's as secondary goal to getting the main payload into orbit. The Shuttle had good goals in mind but turns out its just cheaper in the long run to make something that won't last more than one launch.

What sounds like a more attractive option, owning and operating a semi to make round-trip deliveries cross country where the driver goes sight-seeing along the way or to buy and ship a shipping container that makes a one-way trip?

> The whole purpose of the Space Shuttle was to put people into space (and bring them back). The only payloads it carried were those requiring human intervention to deploy

This is simply not a true statement.

No, not at all.

They are totally different configs, for totally different purposes.

It's like comparing a drone to a jet or to a cargo plane.

> for totally different purposes

For every “send things to the ISS” and “put thing in orbit” mission, the two are directly comparable. The Space Shuttle simply wasn’t using its maximum capacity that often for big packages. The Space Shuttle was a boondoggle.

For crew launches, the per-person cost of the Shuttle still compares unfavourably to SpaceX’s projected crew launch costs. But projected isn’t actual, so we’ll let the Shuttle keep its spot for now.

(Special repair projects and ISS boosting are two things the Shuttle can do that SpaceX currently cannot.)

The space shuttle carried up human beings, often to 'do stuff'.

That alone puts it in a completely different category than Falcon.

FYI many (most?) drone missions that the US does right now would not be carried out by manned aircraft for a whole host of reasons.

I agree. One is used to bring supplies to the research station, the other was used to build the research station.

It's not a fair comparison: You're comparing how much it costs to move 1kg with a Mini Cooper vs moving 1kg with an 18 Wheeler.

I'm not disagreeing with the Falcon 9 being incredibly cheap, and the SpaceShuttle being outrageously expensive - I agree with both statements. I just think the direct price comparison is bad.

> You're comparing how much it costs to move 1kg with a Mini Cooper vs moving 1kg with an 18 Wheeler

Most of the Shuttle’s payloads were aggregates of smaller payloads. For big stuff, sure, the Shuttle retains its mantle. But it simply wasn’t launching that much big stuff.

> But it simply wasn’t launching that much big stuff.

Just most parts of the ISS

This is something people forget or ignore.

Without the shuttle we couldn’t have the ISS, MIR wasn’t much larger than Skylab.

https://i.stack.imgur.com/v13FW.jpg

The Shuttle is what allowed us to launch a station the size of the ISS and construct it in orbit.

Is it impossible to have both projects? (sincerely asking, maybe it's economically not feasible)

Skylab was 77 tons and launched on a single Saturn V. The ISS is 420 tons and took, among other things, 27 space shuttle launches to put together[1].

So to a first approximation the ISS could have been over 2000 tons if NASA had just stuck with and scaled up the Saturn V architecture, which history has shown was both more capable and cheaper.

So no, the Shuttle isn't what allowed us to construct the ISS. Except in the narrow sense that the better launch vehicle had been cancelled, so it was the only project left to do the job.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_of_the_International_...

I don’t think you understand what the Shuttle did for the ISS it’s not about it being a launch platform but about it being a huge EVA and construction platform from which in orbit construction operations could be run.

We have no way to do any major service to the ISS now without the shuttle and the ISS retrofit was the main reason for the deferral in the Shuttles retirement.

As the Soviet/Russian Mir showed you don't need some shuttle-like vehicle to construct such a station. Mir was 130 tons, and almost exclusively launched by Proton-K's, which have a 20 ton mass to LEO.

By comparison the Saturn V has a 140 ton mass to LEO, 7x what the Proton-K could carry, and more importantly could have carried modules double the diameter of what the shuttle could put into LEO.

The unique selling point of the shuttle was the ability to return payloads from orbit to the ground for servicing, but as it turns out that was much more expensive than having a cheaper launcher and just launching another module.

Let's not draw the wrong conclusions from history. The shuttle was a failed launch system by any reasonable criteria. History has shown that plain old boring boosters were the right choice. The Soviets/Russians have been able to launch things to the ISS after the US lost its wings.

The only reason we have "no way to do any major service to the ISS" is not because the shuttle was so great, but because it was a dead end. The US has had to play catch-up with the COTS program with SpaceX et al.

No if anything MIR shows us is just how much we needed the shuttle.

MIR wasn’t only 4 times smaller than the ISS in terms of tonnage but it’s design was the same as the Salyut and Skylab the ISS was the first thing we can say we actually constructed in orbit.

There's nothing indispensable in the Shuttle design. All of the ISS construction operations could have been done with a (possibly specialized) traditional spacecraft. Non-autonomous USOS-style module delivery and berthing, truss mounting, EVAs etc. Shuttle has been used in ISS construction just because it was available.

The only thing that could have been somewhat complicated without Shuttle capabilities was returning the Mir solar panels, for detailed analysis of their faster-than-expected degradation.

This article discusses the return of the Mir solar panels:

https://www.americaspace.com/2012/12/20/what-do-mirs-solar-a...

That payload is small enough that it could have been put on a reentry capsule if it wasn't for the Space Shuttle.

There’s no fundamental reason ISS modules couldn’t autonomously dock with each other. The main reason it wasn’t entirely built that way (though some sections definitely were) is because of the desire to create a PR justification for the Shuttle. In fact, modules have been added to the station since the Shuttle went out of service, and will continue to be added. Anything that couldn’t connect that way you could install onsite using EVA by ISS crew and the ISS Canadarm, which is a level of capability you could easily reach by launching autonomous self-powered modules.

Proton-K could launch 80% the weight of the Shuttle. Note that only 11 Shuttle launches were over 20,000 kg, which is well within the Proton-K weight envelope. (Not to mention the Titan IV.)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-lift_launch_vehicle

I welcome the change in comparison, Shuttle vs. Proton-K makes much more sense. But back to your point that's being discussed: How many Falcon9 launches would it take to lift a similar share of the ISS? How much would that cost?

> How many Falcon9 launches would it take to lift a similar share of the ISS? How much would that cost?

Most ISS components were less than the Falcon 9's capacity. Given Falcon 9 launches payloads an order of magnitude cheaper (cost per kg) than the Shuttle did, cost savings would almost certainly be realized. The remaining payloads would be more expensive to launch on other platforms, but that extra cost for a few projects is outweighed by the savings across the bulk of what the Shuttle did.

For heavy-lift launches, Titan IV and Proton beat it. For manned launches, Soyuz beat it. Today, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are better options, though they are built (in part) on the lessons of the Shuttle.

> Most ISS components were less than the Falcon 9's capacity.

I want to see the attempt of building the ISS with a Falcon 9. Some assembly launches would be within lift capacity (especially on the expendable configuration). Some payloads would actually fit in the fairing. But when you have it in orbit - what then? The Space Shuttle not only lifted the modules into space, it berthed them to the station, and carried the crew together with the payload to execute the assembly operations and be able to react in time.

As much as I agree that the Space Shuttle was way too expensive, it was irreplaceable for building the ISS, and had it existed back then, the Falcon 9 wouldn't have changed that.

If it was irreplaceable how did the Soviet Union / Russia build Mir? A space station 1/3 the weight of the ISS and incrementally assembled in space from multiple modules.

They built it with a lot of drawbacks: Small modules, complex assembly, requiring modules to have their own propulsion systems, etc.

Plus, since this seems to get forgotten a lot, size matters. I find the best size comparison between the ISS and MIR is with the Space Shuttle attached: ISS [1] vs Mir [2].

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width_f...

[2] https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0210/shuttlemir_nasa_big.jp...

That's if anything an argument for a Saturn V carrying some platform that would look like the flight deck / cargo bay / Canadarm part of the Space Shuttle to orbit to help with in-orbit assembly.

Sure, you might need some such platform to construct something in orbit. That's basically a space forklift with thrusters.

It isn't an argument for Space Shuttle system as a whole, i.e. propulsion system, heat shield, solid rocket boosters & external tank, being needed.

For what it cost to launch the shuttle such a platform could have been entirely expendable with astronauts returning in capsules, and they'd still have saved money, and been able to take up 3-4x the amount of cargo up on each trip.

Yes it's a fair comparison but it's also a terrible comparison, since the shuttle was crippled in that area due to other requirements tackled onto it.

If you're talking about the one aiming to be best in the field to describe how good it is performing, you usually don't compare it to the broken clock of the group.

> Yes it's a fair comparison but it's also a terrible comparison, since the shuttle was crippled in that area due to other requirements tackled onto it.

It's a fair comparison if the real product of the space shuttle program is compared with the real product of the Falcon Heavy program.

Comparing what the space shuttle could hypothetically have been with what Falcon Heavy actually is would not be a fair comparison.

Again please read my message again, I didn't say the comparison was unfair, I said it was fair but terrible and not providing any value.

> The shuttle isn't really designed to put basic stuff in space

The shuttle was absolutely designed to "put basic stuff in space". By being partially reusable it was meant to be cheaper than all other "expendable" US rockets and replace them all even even for simple satellite launches.

The fact that the original goals couldn't be met was only made clear after the Challenger disaster.

For reference, I interned on the the space station.

Also context, consider cost complexity: manned space flight >> space flight >> aerospace >> automotive.

Each increase in risk implies considerably more expense, and the difference between space flight that includes humans, and flight that doesn't is quite massive. They are different programs entirely.

So if you're putting something in space with 'humans going along' - it will always be way more expensive, no matter what.

The shuttle was supposed to be cheaper than multiple manned rockets, but not cheaper than regular satellite launches.

So for putting out complex things like Hubble, or 'fixing it' 'retrofitting' etc. - the Shuttle might make sense.

But it was never going to be cheaper than regular rockets for putting relatively straightforward satellites in space.

I interned on the the space station.

Say what? I didn't know they had interns up there.

Ha :) on the space station project :)

> shuttle was supposed to be cheaper than multiple manned rockets, but not cheaper than regular satellite launches

This isn’t how it was sold to the public.

> I interned on the the space station

Thank you. Without the ISS, we wouldn’t have SpaceX.

No.

Manned space flight is known to be way more expensive than cheap, rocket satellite launches. There never was a comparison.

The Shuttle was going to be cheaper than manned rockets, and frankly, probably was. I can't imagine who much it would cost to put up a manned rocket to do some of the retrofitting of Hubble, for example. I don't even think their is proper vehicles for that in existence! So it would be out of the question in terms of cost.

The shuttle did mostly what it was supposed to, it just got old. And there is the space station to do science.

> Shuttle was going to be cheaper than manned rockets, and frankly, probably was

Soyuz + any international heavy launch candidate duplicates the Shuttle’s capabilities at a fraction of the cost.

There's a great graphic I've seen in the past but I can't find that illustrates why there's nothing we currently have that can service Hubble. Hubble is 150 miles higher in altitude than the ISS. The closest thing we could put together would be a Soyuz, Dragon, or Boeing capsule attached to a Centaur stage a la Gemini Agena, but none of these combinations currently exist in any real sense. While we could theoretically glue enough rocket pieces together to perform missions the Space Shuttle (or Apollo and Gemini Agena for that matter) could accomplish, the fact is we do not have those capabilities ready to fly. That is the advantage the Space Shuttle had. It had both the capabilities and the sign off to perform these missions.

Hubble was also designed with that stuff in mind. That the issue with lots of things NASA does. The always make everything depend on each other so they can say that its 'the only way'.

Thats how we ended up with thee uterly insane SLS, Orion, Gateway architecture.

> So for putting out complex things like Hubble, or 'fixing it' 'retrofitting' etc. - the Shuttle might make sense.

Fixing Hubble was one of the most complex operations the Shuttle ever did. Although only the shuttle could do things like repair and retrieval, the large majority of the satellites that ever entered the Shuttle cargo bay were simply launched and released.

More specifically, of the 105 satellites the Shuttle interacted with, only 4 were repaired-and-redeployed (including Hubble) and only 5 were recovered back to Earth.

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/hillger/Shuttle-related....

> The shuttle was supposed to be cheaper than multiple manned rockets, but not cheaper than regular satellite launches.

Do you have cites to support this? It's not consistent with my impression of the expectations for the Shuttle when it first started flying. Your other comments here give the strong impression that you are arguing based on your intuitive knowledge of spaceflight costs that no reasonable person could have thought launching dumb satellites on the Shuttle would have been cost effective. However, I think that's hindsight, and in fact many people at the time expected the Shuttle to cheaply deploy basic satellites, and that this was part of its official mandate. Indeed, Wikipedia says

> the plan was for all future U.S. space launches—space station, Air Force, commercial satellites, and scientific research—to use only the space shuttle. Most other expendable boosters would be phased out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_design_process

EDIT: And from another link in this thread (written at the time):

> NASA plans to terminate all throw-away rocket launches as soon as the shuttle is working.

http://www.iasa-intl.com/folders/shuttle/GoodbyeColumbia.htm...

Lacrosse was also redeployed.

Do you have a cite? Wikipedia doesn't mention it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_(satellite)

It was on STS-27. It's mentioned in the Wikipedia page for that mission and also in this article:

https://www.americaspace.com/2018/12/09/dying-all-tensed-up-...

Thanks. That sounds like it there was a spacewalk to fix a deployment problem, not a recovery and re-deployment of a previously deployed satellite. That's not really relevant to the current context of "how often was the Shuttle doing something (capture-and-repair or recovery) that an expendable vehicle couldn't?".

You should learn about how the shuttle was created and sold to the public 1972-1986.

This is the perfect place to recommend "History of the Space Shuttle, Volume Two: Development of the Space Shuttle, 1972-1981" by T. A. Heppenheimer. An excellent account of a nation-scale engineering project and all the myriad engineering, economic, infrastructure, political, and project management pieces that go into it. Eye opening if you've never been involved in true mega-scale projects.

There's also "Space Shuttle Decision, 1965-1972 (History of the Space Shuttle, Volume 1", but I think Volume 2 is far more interesting from an engineering point of view.

What if I argue that the humans were only on the shuttle to make it re-useable, because that was the only way to land a spaceship in the 80s.

Buran was of similar vintage and could land autonomously. I don’t think there was anything preventing the Shuttle from having that capability, other than a lack of desire. As I recall, the hardware was fully capable of it except for being able to lower the landing gear, which the astronauts insisted on being manual because doing it at the wrong moment would be fatal.

The Space Shuttle's reentry and landing was famously 99.99% performed by autopilot, with the 0.01% being lowering the landing gear[1], ostensibly so that the astronauts felt like they had something to do.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle#Re-entry_and_lan...

> The fact that the original goals couldn't be met was only made clear after the Challenger disaster.

It only became official after the Challenger disaster, but it was quite clear to everyone who followed the project even before the first shuttle launched.

http://www.iasa-intl.com/folders/shuttle/GoodbyeColumbia.htm...

That's a very long link. Can you please quote the relevant parts that you think support your point?

The main bullet is:

> And, according to The Washington Monthly's sources, flying the shuttle will cost more, not less, than flying those old disposable rockets.

It is explained in the sections titled "Economy at any Cost" and "Turn Down the Volume".

The main argument, which was shown to be correct, is that NASA inflated the launch volume in order to amortized their huge fixed costs on an unrealistic number of flights.

Thanks! However, this seems to be an economic estimate by one guy that sounds plausible enough but can't be fully assessed by a non-expert. Although it's useful evidence, it's not very helpful for determining the actual expert opinion at the time.

The 1973 GAO report[1] mentions the same issues. It does not reach a final judgement, but recommends Congress should examine the planned missions carefully.

The recommendations and conclusions sections is a relatively short and easy read. I get the impression (though it could be my bias) that it is written skeptically.

[1] https://www.gao.gov/assets/210/203748.pdf

Also, it's a great article. Well worth reading.

It withstood the test of time.

The space shuttle was to be America's "pickup truck to space". It was designed to haul everything from polar-orbiting spy satellites to interplanetary scientific missions, as well as being an on-orbit research platform. In fact, naively for the first few years it even looked like it hit those goals. At first.

Shuttle was specially designed to put basic stuff in space. It was designed to be launched 50 times per year (once a week) as a space truck. Shuttle failed spectacularly from the engineering perspective and ate NASA's budget for decades. It was failure turned into success story with clever PR.

* But they developed lots of cool tech is not a good defense. Failing to deliver did not bring the tech. It was inevitable.

* But there were missions that only Shuttle could do is not right either when you think it over.

> * But there were missions that only Shuttle could do is not right either when you think it over.

I can think of two admittedly unlikely mission profiles that only STS or Buran could have pulled off:

* Recovering a satellite already in orbit safely back to Earth.

* Orbital bombing. While you could launch an orbital missile platform, it would have a predictable enough orbit to be vulnerable to ASAT. You would have to execute multiple burns for evasive maneuvers and that’s easier with a manned spacecraft. This, specifically, was the capability the Soviets feared enough to design Buran. This is also a violation of international law, not that such things matter in a scenario where you are dropping hydrogen bombs from orbit.

> Recovering a satellite already in orbit safely back to Earth.

Shuttle was used for recovery only four times. It would have been cheaper to ditch all those satellites and build and send new ones compared to recovering them.

> Orbital bombing

ICBM's do it better.

> Shuttle was used for recovery only four times. It would have been cheaper to ditch all those satellites and build and send new ones compared to recovering them.

I didn't say it was a valuable use case, nor did I say you were recovering your own satellites.

> ICBM's do it better.

ICBM's follow a predictable ballistic trajectory and are more vulnerable to countermeasures. Again, this might not be a good use case, but it is one.

In the words of cosmonaut Oleg Kotov: "We had no civilian tasks for Buran and the military ones were no longer needed. It was originally designed as a military system for weapon delivery, maybe even nuclear weapons. The American shuttle also has military uses....A shuttle is particularly useful for this because it can change its orbit and trajectory – so an attack from it is almost impossible to protect against." Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20664-cosmonaut-sovie...

Here is a good overview of the state of the launch costs: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-rocket-cost/

Are you including the Space Shuttle itself in the payload?

Not trying to say Space Shuttle wasn't extremely expensive, but comparing two different things isn't exactly fair.

Does it matter if it's fair? The shuttle was used for ferrying things to space for decades, so it is kind of a relevant comparison.

Not the same type of things. Space X doesn't dock with space stations or repair telescopes, space shuttle doesn't launch commercial sattelites.

SpaceX docks at the ISS... (technically berths at the ISS).

Space Shuttle did launch satellites:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Shuttle_missions...

Edit:

"The original plan, ridiculous as it was in hindsight, was for STS to be the sole US launcher of all payloads.

However, after the loss of the Orbiter Challenger only seconds into mission STS-51-L, US policy was changed to only allow the Shuttle to launch scientific and military payloads that required human presence. This destroyed any economic rationale for making STS self supporting or a revenue generator.

The first 4 missions were test flights, so omitting them, you can see that 11 of the 21 "operational" missions before the policy change carried commercial satellite payloads, often multiple, up to 3 comsats per mission. A total of 18 commercial satellites were deployed from the Shuttle. "

https://space.stackexchange.com/a/10352

SpaceX also does cargo missions to the space station (crew happening next year) which is probably a better $/kg comparison to the space shuttle for some missions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Resupply_Services#S...

Sure the Shuttle had unique capabilities and the Falcon rockets aren't better in all ways, but the Shuttle was originally supposed to be a cheap and reusable way for the US to do the majority of its space launches and that turned out to not be its strong suit.

Isn’t it? Commercially price per kg of cargo seems like the most relevant metric.

But that figure differs, even for SpaceX, if you are carrying a spacecraft or cargo in a capsule. Or humans.

Space Shuttle was a spacecraft that was much more capable than coupling on 2nd stage. So of course the price point per cargo carried is completely different. It doesn't make any sense to compare it that way. What you can compare is the price of the rocket launch and complete payload delivered to orbit, and that includes the vehicle.

If you only care about economics for satellite launches for example, then yeah, it is much cheaper. But so are many other systems, so why pick Space Shuttle for comparison?

Because that was part of the Space Shuttle's original purpose, but the reusability and cost didn't work out that way:

"The original plan, ridiculous as it was in hindsight, was for STS to be the sole US launcher of all payloads.

https://space.stackexchange.com/a/10352

The original purpose of the Space Shuttle was to be a highly reusable launch system to make frequent launches (including commercial and govt satellites and space probes) with minimal refurbishment time/cost. That sounds an awful lot like SpaceX's current goals, doesn't it?

Yes it had some mission profiles that the current SpaceX fleet can't do (large extended-duration crew missions in LEO, orbiting laboratory, Hubble repair) but there are also profiles that SpaceX can do that Shuttle could not (anything that involves stage 2 going beyond LEO).

Means vs ends.

When you talk about launch costs, you care about the cost to get “the stuff you really want in orbit”.

The formal term for that stuff is “payload”. So cost per kg of payload is the relevant figure of merit.

The mass of the space shuttle is not payload. It is a means of delivering payload. As such, you do not get credit or establish launch efficiency by launching it.

It is not inefficiency to launch without carrying the space shuttle; just the opposite.

So in this figure, do you exclude Dragon weight for resupply missions? And even then, it's apples to oranges, because Space Shuttle was a manned spacecraft which brings millions other requirements into place. So the only fair comparison in this case would be to compare manned Dragon cost per kg of cargo to Space Shuttle's cargo.

There are much more efficient systems for only carrying stuff into space and dropping it there. The Space Shuttle example makes no sense if this is what you care about.

>So in this figure, do you exclude Dragon weight for resupply missions?

I don't know about the Dragon, but, like before, if the Dragon's weight is the thing you really want out of the atmosphere, then yes, but if you only care about the supplies inside, then no.

>And even then, it's apples to oranges, because Space Shuttle was a manned spacecraft which brings millions other requirements into place.

What requirements? But yes, it's fair to break out "human" vs "inanimate" kg of payload. Do SpaceX products for carrying humans perform poorly when comparing to alternate ways of launching human payloads? Do SpaceX products for carrying inanimate matter perform poorly when compared to the same?

> Do SpaceX products for carrying inanimate matter perform poorly when compared to the same?

Absolutely not. Which makes it ever weirder to bring up Space Shuttle.

hmm, you might be right. Over lifetime of the Space Shuttle program, money spent equates to $1.7 billion (2017 dollars) per Shuttle launch. https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-falcon-heavy-launch-c...

Incremental cost of each Shuttle flight was $18,000 per kg to LEO (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle...). Price per KG of a FH launch is about $1411 to LEO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy.

So on incremental costs its about 12 times cheaper per kg to LEO

Or if you think thats still not fair, and want to treat the shuttle orbiter itself as payload - a bit abstract, but lets go with it - the shuttle launch comes out as about $4400 per kg of orbiter-and-payload, so Falcon Heavy is still 3 times cheaper than that.

edit: And its still not really a fair comparison because Shuttle could do more and carried people etc. But there it is.

It's not fair because a lot of the Space Shuttle missions included a lot more than just simple payload delivery.

Fair point.

So basically the business model is sound so long as the BFR doesn’t blow up

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