"ed kyle" wrote in message
om...
"rschmitt23" wrote in message
news:ChP0c.24596$aZ3.13941@fed1read04...
The 23Feb04 issue of Aviation Week reports that NASA is telling Congress
that the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), the space agencies latest and
greatest orbiter replacement, will cost $15B to develop. Earlier NASA
estimated that the Orbital SpacePlane (OSP), last year's super-duper
orbiter
replacement, would cost $10-13B (todays bucks). NASA keeps turning the
crank
and coming up with the same numbers. The development cost of the
original
orbiter was about $14B in today's money.


According to Jenkins, NASA had spent something like $28 billion
plus (FY2000 dollars) on STS development by the time the first
launch took place in 1981. Total program costs had risen to
$114.6 billion by the end of 2000.


Here's the breakdown for STS cost covering the 1970-82 development period
(in FY2000 dollars, aka $Y2K) taken from NASA's annual budget documents:

Orbiter: $14B
SSME: $3B
ET: $1.3B
SRM/SRB: $1.3B
Facilities: $3.4B
Total: $23B

The details are in Chapters 28 thru 44 of my recent book on U.S. manned
spaceflight in the 20th century.
I can't find my copies of Jenkins' books and I don't remember what cost
categories he included in his total.

BTW: my figure for total STS program cost (1970 thru 2000) in $Y2K is
$115.6B (see Chapter 44 of my book).

Later
Ray Schmitt