Means vs ends.

When you talk about launch costs, you care about the cost to get “the stuff you really want in orbit”.

The formal term for that stuff is “payload”. So cost per kg of payload is the relevant figure of merit.

The mass of the space shuttle is not payload. It is a means of delivering payload. As such, you do not get credit or establish launch efficiency by launching it.

It is not inefficiency to launch without carrying the space shuttle; just the opposite.

So in this figure, do you exclude Dragon weight for resupply missions? And even then, it's apples to oranges, because Space Shuttle was a manned spacecraft which brings millions other requirements into place. So the only fair comparison in this case would be to compare manned Dragon cost per kg of cargo to Space Shuttle's cargo.

There are much more efficient systems for only carrying stuff into space and dropping it there. The Space Shuttle example makes no sense if this is what you care about.

>So in this figure, do you exclude Dragon weight for resupply missions?

I don't know about the Dragon, but, like before, if the Dragon's weight is the thing you really want out of the atmosphere, then yes, but if you only care about the supplies inside, then no.

>And even then, it's apples to oranges, because Space Shuttle was a manned spacecraft which brings millions other requirements into place.

What requirements? But yes, it's fair to break out "human" vs "inanimate" kg of payload. Do SpaceX products for carrying humans perform poorly when comparing to alternate ways of launching human payloads? Do SpaceX products for carrying inanimate matter perform poorly when compared to the same?

> Do SpaceX products for carrying inanimate matter perform poorly when compared to the same?

Absolutely not. Which makes it ever weirder to bring up Space Shuttle.

hmm, you might be right. Over lifetime of the Space Shuttle program, money spent equates to $1.7 billion (2017 dollars) per Shuttle launch. https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-falcon-heavy-launch-c...

Incremental cost of each Shuttle flight was $18,000 per kg to LEO (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle...). Price per KG of a FH launch is about $1411 to LEO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy.

So on incremental costs its about 12 times cheaper per kg to LEO

Or if you think thats still not fair, and want to treat the shuttle orbiter itself as payload - a bit abstract, but lets go with it - the shuttle launch comes out as about $4400 per kg of orbiter-and-payload, so Falcon Heavy is still 3 times cheaper than that.

edit: And its still not really a fair comparison because Shuttle could do more and carried people etc. But there it is.

It's not fair because a lot of the Space Shuttle missions included a lot more than just simple payload delivery.

Fair point.

Isn’t it? Commercially price per kg of cargo seems like the most relevant metric.

But that figure differs, even for SpaceX, if you are carrying a spacecraft or cargo in a capsule. Or humans.

Space Shuttle was a spacecraft that was much more capable than coupling on 2nd stage. So of course the price point per cargo carried is completely different. It doesn't make any sense to compare it that way. What you can compare is the price of the rocket launch and complete payload delivered to orbit, and that includes the vehicle.

If you only care about economics for satellite launches for example, then yeah, it is much cheaper. But so are many other systems, so why pick Space Shuttle for comparison?

Because that was part of the Space Shuttle's original purpose, but the reusability and cost didn't work out that way:

"The original plan, ridiculous as it was in hindsight, was for STS to be the sole US launcher of all payloads.

However, after the loss of the Orbiter Challenger only seconds into mission STS-51-L, US policy was changed to only allow the Shuttle to launch scientific and military payloads that required human presence. This destroyed any economic rationale for making STS self supporting or a revenue generator.

The first 4 missions were test flights, so omitting them, you can see that 11 of the 21 "operational" missions before the policy change carried commercial satellite payloads, often multiple, up to 3 comsats per mission. A total of 18 commercial satellites were deployed from the Shuttle. "

https://space.stackexchange.com/a/10352

The original purpose of the Space Shuttle was to be a highly reusable launch system to make frequent launches (including commercial and govt satellites and space probes) with minimal refurbishment time/cost. That sounds an awful lot like SpaceX's current goals, doesn't it?

Yes it had some mission profiles that the current SpaceX fleet can't do (large extended-duration crew missions in LEO, orbiting laboratory, Hubble repair) but there are also profiles that SpaceX can do that Shuttle could not (anything that involves stage 2 going beyond LEO).

Does it matter if it's fair? The shuttle was used for ferrying things to space for decades, so it is kind of a relevant comparison.

Not the same type of things. Space X doesn't dock with space stations or repair telescopes, space shuttle doesn't launch commercial sattelites.

Space Shuttle did launch satellites:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Shuttle_missions...

Edit:

"The original plan, ridiculous as it was in hindsight, was for STS to be the sole US launcher of all payloads.

However, after the loss of the Orbiter Challenger only seconds into mission STS-51-L, US policy was changed to only allow the Shuttle to launch scientific and military payloads that required human presence. This destroyed any economic rationale for making STS self supporting or a revenue generator.

The first 4 missions were test flights, so omitting them, you can see that 11 of the 21 "operational" missions before the policy change carried commercial satellite payloads, often multiple, up to 3 comsats per mission. A total of 18 commercial satellites were deployed from the Shuttle. "

https://space.stackexchange.com/a/10352

SpaceX also does cargo missions to the space station (crew happening next year) which is probably a better $/kg comparison to the space shuttle for some missions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Resupply_Services#S...

Sure the Shuttle had unique capabilities and the Falcon rockets aren't better in all ways, but the Shuttle was originally supposed to be a cheap and reusable way for the US to do the majority of its space launches and that turned out to not be its strong suit.

SpaceX docks at the ISS... (technically berths at the ISS).