[KennyBlanken]

All this is irrelevant. The shuttle required so much inspection, refurbishment, and repair that it was little more than the world's largest and most expensive piece of political pork for a giant PR stunt. Contractors were selected so that every state had a contractor making shuttle parts in order to bribe congressional reps into supporting the massive boondoggle.

Each launch cost almost half a billion dollars in 2010 money. The Falcon 9 is reportedly $60-65M per launch.

SLS was just more of the same, welfare for all the states with contractors who grew fat and happy off the shuttle contracts. There was no technical argument whatsoever for reusing such ancient technologies.

Each RS25 engine cost $35M to refurbish for use in the SLS. For the cost of building TEN falcon 9 engines, NASA refurbished one RS25 engine.

And yes, of course it was absurdly dangerous to rely on not just one but two solid rocket motors of which there is no control whatsoever except for slight thrust vectoring...

[Xc43]

I understand the costs were higher. Albeit, it could be called a political stunt, did it not provide a lot of employment? So, while inefficient was it not a good thing (in at least the short-term, the long-term could be debated).

My understanding of the federal government of the US is that it is mainly a subsidizer of their national military-industrial complex. Something I would call: military-industrial socialism.

With that said, it is just more of the same in a different era. 1930s and the Empire State Building: to re-invigorate the economy, Eisenhower and the interstate highway system: to provide a stronger national defense, etc

[ericd]

Even more stark, the raptor 3 supposedly costs <$500k to build, so you can get around 70 (almost two full starship stacks worth) for the price of refurbishing one of those engines.