In article ,
says...
Agreed because by Bruno's logic, if NASA had commercialized the shuttle and
only charged the marginal cost, it would have been fairly cheap.
Anything can be cheap when someone else is paying for it.


The space shuttle program did just that, sold commercial launches to
satellite companies for far less than the actual cost. Now that the
program is over we know the true cost ($1.45 billion per launch). NASA
never charged the true cost of a flight to its commercial customers.

Of course, the Challenger disaster put an end to that practice and
actually made it illegal for NASA to sell commercial launches anymore.
That was the start of opening up the commercial markets in the US.
Unfortunately the USAF decided it wanted control and the original EELV
was born, leaving us with ULA. In other words, the USAF "intervention"
for national security reasons prolonged the practice of the US
Government subsidizing the US launch industry, keeping the real costs
high and actually hurting the US launch industry in the long run.

Jeff
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