On Fri, 8 Jul 2011 11:58:20 -0700, "Richard Stephens"
wrote:

Original estimates of costs per launch were only $7 million. They ended up
costing over $1 billion.

What went wrong?

Was it a deliberate lie, or bad management?

Part of it is that the original figure is in 1972 dollars, while the
$1 billion plus figure is in today's dollars. $7 million in 1972 is
roughly $36 million today.

But the biggest thing is that promised cost assumed the Shuttle would
be used for all but the smallest satellite launches. That never
happened. The government decided to use the Shuttle only for missions
which required the presence of a crew. That cut the Shuttle's flight
rate from 50 flights per year (which was never remotely realistic) to
24 or so a year (ambitious but theoretically possible) and finally an
average of only 5 or 6 missions per year over which to amortize the
high annual infrastructure costs.

Brian