The space shuttle is a human-rated launch vehicle capable of taking 7 people into orbit at a total cost of $445M per launch, or about $65M per seat. When subcontracted to Russia, the charge was about $85M per person. Crew Dragon costs about $55M per person - which is one place my 10% number comes from.
Cargo flights are different, and you should also look at total program costs from the deal with NASA. The NASA contract [1] was for ~12 launchs, minimum 20T of cargo for $1.6B. That puts the total program cost at $80,000 per kg. The space shuttle program costs were about $60,000 per kg.
But don't take my word for it, here's a quote from a NASA scientist saying their payload cost per pound went up. [2]
"My cost per pound went up with these rockets," Margasahayam told Tech Insider. "On the shuttle, it would be much less."
The article there cites per-kg costs at $10,000 on the space shuttle vs $27,000 on SpaceX. With the Dragon it came down to about $9,000 per kg, which is again about 10% below the price NASA was paying for the shuttle.
The $445M number doesn't count the total cost of the program, which put each Shuttle launch at ~ $1.5 billion.
Average cost of a SpaceX resupply is $152 million. That's the total amount the US government pays per mission.
You couldn't send the shuttle up with 10% of the cargo capacity and only pay 10% of the cost. The Shuttle was $1.5 billion whether it was 16,000 kg to the ISS or 2,000 kg.
Nor could you just use it to send two people to the ISS and only pay $170 million for two seats (Really $400 million - the actual cost for two seats.)
> The article there cites per-kg costs at $10,000 on the space shuttle vs $27,000 on SpaceX. With the Dragon it came down to about $9,000 per kg, which is again about 10% below the price NASA was paying for the shuttle.
> Their own numbers say that in the fullness of time they may be 10% cheaper. So far, not so.
How do you reconcile these two statements? Are the costs now 10% cheaper per kg or not?
Also from the link 2
> Margasahayam points out that, while the space shuttles were more expensive — a whopping $500 million per launch (or possibly $1.5 billion, according to one analysis we've seen) — each mission carried about 50,000 lbs. (plus seven astronauts!). That means each pound of cargo used to cost about $10,000 to ship on a shuttle.
Some estimates are even higher than that, close to $2 billion, inflation adjusted
It's deceptive to compare the two since the shuttle really is good almost exclusively for ISS missions, Hubble repair, etc (unique Canadarm capability) while F9 is the cheapest there is for Satellite launches at $2,720/kg. It isn't so great to require a crew for a satellite launch. The shuttle can only stay docked to the ISS for about 14 days while crew dragon can stay for over 180 days.
Mr. Margasahayam does not work on any mission I've been able to find. It sounds more like Business Insider being it's normal self trying to drum up false things about Musk businesses.
Notably Falcon 9 launch prices have dropped to ~60M. That means that at this point, SpaceX is about twice as cost efficient per kg to LEO as the shuttle was.
> So far, the average costs of launching cargo remain on par with the space shuttle at about $US30,000 per lb. (The space shuttle cost about $US1.5 billion per mission, including development, and could carry up to 50,000 lbs of cargo.)
Also not to mention that the Wikipedia table is probably irrelevant, because for the Space Shuttle launch cost is just the total cost of the entire program (including R&D and everything else) divided by how much it actually carried, while SpaceX figures are literally just Elon's marketing material. Look at the citations.
> The development of commercial launch systems has substantially reduced the cost of space launch. NASA’s space shuttle had a cost of about $1.5 billion to launch 27,500 kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), $54,500/kg. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 now advertises a cost of $62 million to launch 22,800 kg to LEO, $2,720/kg.
The fact that SpaceX advertises that figure doesn't make it true.
The fact that business insider (a much discredited tabloid) puts it in an article doesn't make it true either. Falcon 9 is MUCH cheaper than launching on Space Shuttle ever was. Your article is from 5 years ago btw.
Does the federal government pay the same rates we commercial third-parties from abroad get to go to launch?
To my understanding several times the federal government has special requests that can and will drive the launch cost upwards for many (if not all) launch providers.
> Does the federal government pay the same rates we commercial third-parties from abroad get to go to launch?
Every launch contract is bespoke and the customers can request additional (sometimes significant) amounts of documentation of part providence and the rest. The US government often requests significantly extra documentation so it increases costs quite a bit.
do you have a source for this? Wikipedia data in the Launch vehicle estimated payload cost per kg table disagrees with you. By a factor of ~20.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...