Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by whatshisface 2284 days ago
How much would a launch pad that will be used four times normally cost for what they're planning to launch? Without knowing that I can't say if they overpaid 10x, 2x, got it exactly right or got an amazing bargain.
1 comments

In 1965, the Vertical Assembly Building, which was at that time the largest enclosed volume in the world, cost $117M (on a $23.5M original construction contract). That would be about a billion dollars in 2020, but it was completed in 3 years and was used to stack 13 Saturn Vs. It was later used for the 100+ Shuttle missions as well, but there were additional costs to modify the building for this purpose. The VAB is still planned for use for future missions.

https://www.popsci.com/blog-network/vintage-space/nasas-vab-...

so how many of those things were launched from the VAB?
I picked the VAB because it's current dollar cost was roughly a billion dollars.

Total cost for constructing Launch Complex 39, which includes the VAB and the crawler-transporter launchers was estimated 1t $500M in 1962 for 2 pads. A total of 153 launches have occurred from LC-39. This number is greater than 4.