It's no secret that SpaceX has driven commercial launch prices down several times (, ). But I haven't seen estimates of how much impact it had on NASA, so I tried to answer this question.

Lower bound

To establish a minimum savings estimate I took SpaceX and 2nd contractor prices in the COTS, CRS, CCDev and CCP programs, as well as available US launch vehicles based on spacecraft mass and orbit. Please note that in the absence of SpaceX, their place would have been taken by the contractor ranked 3rd in the competition whose bid was worse than the 2nd in terms of price or other important parameters.

For example, Dragon 1 originally had a payload capacity of up and 2,500 kg down, while Cygnus had only 2,000 kg up and zero down. Since the Space Shuttle retirement in 2011 the only other recoverable capsule has been the Russian Soyuz with a 50 kg payload down and ~2 flights per year, making Dragon 1 unique in its capabilities. So the actual savings and benefits of choosing SpaceX would most likely have been noticeably higher than this estimate.

This $6.8B estimate also doesn’t take into account the drop in launch prices of SpaceX rivals driven by competition. For example, ULA was forced to reduce minimum launch prices from to in 2016 and to ~$100M with the debut of the Vulcan Centaur earlier this year. At the same time, maximum prices dropped from to ~$200M. Without competition, prices followed inflation, which would have brought them to the range of $160M to $500M by now. This would lead the total estimate to ~$9B.

Upper bound

Between 1974 and 1987, attempted to commercialize the launch market using the approach of mass production of simple boosters. In 1997-2000, tried the classic approach, but gave up when they saw potential competition from the launch vehicles that NASA was going to fund. Between 1993 and 2010, tried to develop something like the canceled Falcon 5 with a reusable booster, initially with private funding and then with NASA's help.

The last example was by SpaceX, which ultimately led to the start of the COTS program. But it's hard to imagine that they could have been a commercial success considering they spent almost on a ready launch vehicle with performance between Falcon 1 () and Falcon 9 v1.0 ($360M) that the surge in activity in the of communications satellite constellations.

Even without SpaceX's intervention, by the time the Kistler K-1 could have been ready it would have had almost no payloads on the commercial market and too few NASA payloads to justify reusability. Kistler's successor to the COTS program (Orbital) would face the same problem of insufficient launch cadence for Antares, which would prevent them from driving down prices.

Watching this struggle leads to wonder: what would have happened if COTS and subsequent programs had never arisen? Or what if COTS had arisen, but was killed by Congress at the first pretext of underperformance? They have never been fans of commercialization and would happily return NASA to the old business approach if they could find an excuse.

According to NASA estimates the old approach would have cost in 2017 prices ($2.2-5.1B in current) just to build a Falcon 9 analog, not counting Dragon 1 and redundancy in the form of Antares/Cygnus which combined cost NASA only $821M ($1B current). A Falcon 9 Block 5/Crew Dragon replacement would cost NASA ($34.6-48.8B current) while SpaceX and Boeing's fixed contracts only provide ($7B current) for building redundant manned spacecraft.

This means NASA has saved $28.8-41.8B on the COTS and CCDev programs alone, which would need to be doubled for redundancy. But let's be honest, without the commercial program, NASA would never have had the redundancy just like Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle never had it. That means the top estimate could be anywhere between $38B and $50B.

Near future (2024-2025)

I think one cautionary story is worth mentioning in this context. The Europa Clipper mission was originally designed to be launched on . In , Congress directed NASA to use SLS instead, which would have required a redesign of the spacecraft to withstand the rougher launch on it. According to the NASA OIG report from 2021 the launch cost of the first four SLS missions was estimated to be at least each and in 2023 they raised that estimate by another .

Furthermore, Europa Clipper was originally scheduled to launch on the 2nd SLS mission in and despite a 2 year schedule delay, SLS development has been so slow that NASA no longer has a spare launch vehicle until at least the lunar landing of Artemis 3. This means that the launch could happen no earlier than , and since the spacecraft will be ready for launch in October 2024, this could add another in storage costs.

Ironically, the only advantage of the SLS was a direct trajectory that should have allowed the flight to be shortened to . But the delays mean that Falcon Heavy will be able to deliver Europa Clipper to the Jupiter system in , while SLS no earlier than May 2031. And all the launch-related costs would have been at least $3,464M to NASA instead of the $178M they would pay SpaceX.

Medium-term perspective

The Artemis program is estimated at in 2012-2025, which is nearly a third of NASA's budget over that period. Almost 60% of that comes from SLS/Orion, which is by NASA senior officials and the inspector general as "unaffordable" and "unsustainable". And reading this story, you can guess why.

NASA's current total investment in commercial space is of the total budget, or even less than the average investment in SLS/Orion. For that, commercial space already provides all of NASA's transportation to the ISS starting in 2020 while SLS/Orion sits waiting for the opportunity to send 4 astronauts to the middle of nowhere where they will transfer to a commercial lunar lander.

Someday NASA may even build a Gateway space station there to justify the existence of SLS/Orion just like Congress tried with the Europa Clipper. It will be 3-4 times more expensive to build and maintain than a station in low Earth orbit with the "advantages" of rare flybys 15 times farther from the Moon than the Apollo missions and double the crew's exposure to radiation from galactic cosmic rays.

People often ask why there is so much hatred for SLS and I want to answer from my perspective: where you see a cool big rocket, I see lost opportunities. Imagine what commercial space could do with the current level of investment a decade ago and twice that now. We would certainly have a commercial station to replace the ISS by now and NASA would have freed up a lot of money for a truly sustainable lunar program that would make final preparations for Mars.

Instead, we are now doubting whether Artemis program will be sustainable at all. If SLS/Orion continues to eat up most of the Artemis budget long enough, NASA will not have the funds to develop equipment for lunar surface operations and without new achievements this program risks being canceled just like Apollo.

NASA has already taken steps on this path with the commercial HLS and CLPS programs. All that remains for Congress and NASA to do now is cancel the welfare programs for Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman shareholders and invest this money in companies that are willing to put also their own money on the line into making the programs as fast and cheap as possible. Whether we will boldly go down this path or stumble in the middle remains to be seen.