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The shuttle worked, which was amazing considering everything it could do. But the program was a huge money pit because the shuttle had so much capability that went unused on most missions.

You can quibble about the numbers, but a rough calculation puts the program at US$196 billion in 2011 or ~262B in 2023 dollars for 135 attempted flights. So 2B per flight in todays money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program

SLS is aiming for 130t to LEO vs 27.5t to LEO for the Shuttle. 4B a launch would have less than half the shuttle’s cost per kg to LEO, if it’s roughly 2B that’s almost 5 times the cargo for the same budget. Granted the shuttle sent people up on every mission, but spending 60m/person to the ISS lets them stay in orbit for vastly less money / day. Essentially the shuttle launched and returned a large useful space into orbit, but then returned it at the end of every mission, which was extremely expensive.

Both the SLS and shuttle have their advantages but the shuttle was only really useful for LEO as getting that much mass into higher orbits was untenable despite what various movies have suggested.




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