"Jon Berndt" wrote in message ...
Given today's SS1 flight, I'm interested in relevant comparison costs. Not
that these projects are appropriate benchmarks, but does anyone have figures
for the cost of the Mercury program (from conception to first flight) and
the X-15 program (from inception to first flight) - in today's dollars?
Seems to me I recall the X-15 program as a whole running about $200 million
in 196? dollars. No?

Can anyone think of another more valid government program to compare
against?

Jon

To me, even X15 and Mercury aren't very close comparisons.
- Both were exploring a flight regime that at the time was poorly
understood. SS1 has the advantage of 40+ years of experience in this
area. Compare the development effort of the Wright Flyer, or maybe
Bleriot monoplane to building an ultralight 50 years later...
- Both were designed to reach far higher speeds than SS1. This
presents materials problems that SS1 can simply ignore.
- Mercury was explicitly a step toward an orbital spacecraft. If the
goal of Mercury had been seemly to lob a man 100km and not do anything
else, it could have been much simpler. Likewise for the X15 if it
didn't have to reach 7000kph.

Like Derek, I'm not sure there is a valid historical comparison.
Perhaps the X1/X2 programs ? These didn't reach the altitudes that SS1
did, but might be closer in terms of complexity. OTOH, they were going
into unexplored territory.

In any case, it would be interesting to see numbers.