Posted on 06/12/2007 4:48:53 PM PDT by XBob
For what it’s worth, the New Horizons mission to Pluto cost $650 million, of which $200-$250 million was the launch cost. That $650 million includes operations from Phase A studies in 2001 through Pluto encounter in 2015 and post-encounter data analysis. Either way, that’s just over half a billion spent over the course of 15 years, versus $0.5-$1 billion per shuttle launch.
IIRC, satellites on the shuttle do not incur a launch cost, as an incentive to launch from the shuttle instead of unmanned boosters. Maybe that policy has changed post-Columbia, though.
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