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The space shuttle was supposed to reduce the cost of space flight.

If my memory serves, it actually raised it to the point where a shuttle flight cost more and did less than our moon missions.

Reducing the cost of space flight is not a matter of dollars and cents. It's a matter of opening possibilities. As long as it costs a hundred million-odd a mission, it's going to be too expensive for anything but communications and spy satellites to make it out there.

And if you liberate it from the iron grip of government, you could see innovations comparable to those made during the golden years of the Internet.

I don't know about you, but I think that's a big deal. A VERY big deal.

D

Just to add a few comments to yours on costs of shuttle launches.

There are so many ways to account for things that it is very difficult to describe the costs per mission and effectively compare Apollo to Shuttle.

For one thing, the technical differences in the mission profiles has a dramatic impact on costs. Saturn 5 was a huge vehicle and used different fuels than STS.

For another thing, the processing at KSC is dramatically different. The main issue is that the STS does not require assembly lines to manufacture the booster with each mission. The only elements manufactured for each flight are the ET's components.

So, no, I would not agree with your memory. STS is less costly than the Apollo program on a per astronaut or per flight basis.

Reducing the cost of space access is already well underway, and its called the Space Elevator project, and it is being funded by Nasa and other organizations and will likely be reality within the next 30 years it will reduce space access by a thousand times its current cost per ton or more. Rocket propulsion to space is facing the tale end of the curve. Certainly by my grandchildrens time rockets to access space will be the exception.

You really should do some reading on the Space Elevator project, no rocket powered system will be able to remotely compete on price with it once it is built... oh and just for the record it will be built by large research and development investments, not by a small private company.

Go do some research on it, you'll see that the age of the rocket at least as far as the primary means of space launch is coming to an end and very likely within the 30 year or so time frame.