I get tired of reading relativistic projections of costs where someone
will take the costs of training and putting just one or two, or three or
four, astronauts or cosmonauts into space per year and project precisely
those same costs to mass transportation of thousands to millions into space.
Everything concerning putting one or two, or three or four, astronauts or
cosmonauts into space is individually planned and tooled, literally
handcrafted, for each specific mission. The cost of handcrafting from the
bottom-up, per micro-managed top-down planning, precise specifications and
precise controls, for every single one or two, or three or four, humans, and
the one lift and mission, will always be at least thousands of times greater
than mass production costs no matter what the type vehicle or propulsion
system involved.

Under such a system, real advancement, and real lowering of costs, will be
on a time scale that type of system has always followed, that of one
advancement in a hundred, to one advancement in a thousand, years.

Brad