Didn’t shuttle have a larger payload? Up to 8 people and larger cargo.
NASA gave a $55million estimate on cost per seat on crew dragon, which would be about $440 million to launch 8 people.
Not sure that is factoring in reusability once they are willing to use that for crew missions (or offset price reusing crew boosters on non crewed missions).
Another issue with shuttle was reliability though. It may take hundreds of flights to know how much it is improved with crew dragon, but it seems to have better launch abort capabilities etc.
Yeah there's definitely a capability gap. The issue is many of the capabilities weren't necessary or used on every flight.
Stuff like spacelab missions can probably be done using the ISS. Some of the military capabilities are moved to X-37.
Certain of the satellite launching capabilities of the shuttle were hampered by safety concerns post challenger/columbia.
The ability to retrieve and return large cargo is still missing, but it doesn't appear many people are clamoring for it. It'd be nice if we could continue to service Hubble going forward, but that's mostly nostalgia talking.
The Shuttle was supposed to do everything for everyone and it met with predictable results. The promised economies and launch rates were never realized. The safety issues inherent with the design made its continuation nearly impossible.
Having cheaper, mostly reusable launchers that have capabilities that people actually use is way more valuable.
The cost would not increase linearly for 8 people. Dragon 2 was originally designed for 7, NASA requested it be configured for 4. If they wanted to go to 7, my guess is it would be a pretty marginal increase in cost.
The shuttle didn't have any real abort capabilities (other than very late in the flight, when they were already in space, just not in the correct orbit). It had some crazy schemes for earlier stages of flight, but they were never tested, and no one actually thought they would work.
2 people in the shuttle crew were pilots trained to land the shuttle. That was their primary job. Surely they were capable to do other things, but they could not be sent into the space for months and keep their skills intact. So the real number of seats was like 6.
The shuttle had a payload to LEO capacity of 27 tons, but Falcon Heavy can lift over 60 tons. The problem with the Shuttle was the orbiter itself was enormously heavy.
Bear in mind SpaceX is working hard on making Falcon and Dragon obsolete. Starship will have a larger payload than the shuttle and drop costs quite a bit more.
They'll have to stop blowing them up, but at two prototypes per month I think they'll make rapid progress.
