"By 1990, the shuttle had enough experience to conclude that flight rates were not going to increase by much and that annual costs would not go down by much," Pielke explained. The average cost per launch was about $1.5 billion over the life of the US space-shuttle programme, according to a University of Colorado-Boulder analysis. But that proved enough data for Pielke and Radford to come up with ballpark figures. The original shuttle fleet cost projections were based on just eight years of historical flight rates and costs. That allowed Pielke and Radford Byerly, a research associate at the University of Colorado, to compare final costs with cost projections they had made 20 years ago, a time when the shuttle fleet was 10 years old. The shuttle Endeavour will launch on the 134th shuttle flight on April 29, with the Atlantis orbiter pegged for a late June liftoff on the agency's final mission, STS-135. NASA has scheduled the final two shuttle flights for later this year. NASA has launched 131 shuttle missions through 2010 and experienced two tragic disasters: the seven-astronaut crew of shuttle Challenger in 1986, and the seven-person crew of Columbia in 2003. NASA arguably flew the shuttle as often as it could, but always at great expense, Pielke said. But it rises to $1.5 billion per flight when factoring in lifetime program costs, according to the new analysis, which covered the 131 shuttle missions flown between 19. The average cost per launch was about $1.2 billion (in 2010 dollars) during the shuttle's operational years from 1982 to 2010.
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