Rick Jones writes:

gaetanomarano wrote:
---
Shuttle: launch cost $600M, payload 24 tons max (+7 astronauts) = $25M
per ton to ISS
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Falcon/Dragon: COTS+CRS funds to SpaceX $2.1 Bn / 20 tons (and ZERO
astronauts) = $105M per ton to the ISS

If you are going to include the non-recurring costs of Falcon/Dragon
in the per-ton figures, you need also to include the non-recurring
costs of Shuttle.


I completely agree. To do apples to apples you need to do the following,

From:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/383305main_C...SDHLV_Rev1.pdf

page 5 of this document yields a cost 'estimate'* of 5.15 billion dollars
for shuttle development costs.

Using the CPI inflation calculator at

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

and plugging in $1 for 1971 dollars and coverting to 2006 dollars (the year
Space X was awarded its first COTS contract) you get a figure of $4.98

Now multiply 5.15B by 4.98 yields a cost of 25.647B dollars in 2006
dollars.

Now if we do the calc we get:

NASA/Gov. funds to develop space shuttle 25.647B + 600M per launch =
26.247B, payload 24 tons max (+7 astronauts) = $1.093B per ton to ISS.

Dave

*Best I could do in less than 15 minutes of research, anyone have a better
figure?