In article ,
says...

bob haller wrote:

and we could of slowly done more apolo applications missions.

was the shuttle ever cheaper to operate than apollo


A difficult question to answer, since it involves how you account for
costs, flight rates, etc. Saturn V is preposterously expensive to
launch, since you're throwing away all that hardware AND need a huge
'standing army' for stacking and flight operations. A Saturn V launch
costs perhaps 6x what a Shuttle launch costs. A Saturn V doesn't
carry 6x the cargo of the Shuttle. So Saturn V was more expensive,
both per launch and per pound (although they weren't that far apart on
per pound costs at the actually achievable flight rates for Shuttle).

If you hate SLS because of the high cost to launch, you'd REALLY hate
Saturn V, which is at least double the cost of SLS per launch.

The reason naive folks are such fans of Saturn V is that they are
comparing costs in 1970's dollars to costs in 2015 dollars for current
systems.

Makes one wonder just how expensive the standing army costs for SLS will
be. Based on the size, number of stages (and how those stages are
fueled), my guess is that they'll need a standing army similar to the
size of Saturn V.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer