A little on Shuttle costs.

  In April of 1971 congress approved research and development of the Space Shuttle. They approved of about 30% of what NASA needed to do the project. The requirement that was deleted in order to make this work was a reusable tank. None of any of the other major requirements were deleted.  NASA was told to build Mercedes-Benzes on a budget fit for a Schwinn bicycle. They wound up with a Fiat. Creating a Fiat on the budget of Fiat is very impressive.  A lot of the critics bitterly complained that it was not a Mercedes. There was a total lack of recognition of the truly remarkable job that they did.

There were some other problems that surfaced during the engineering of the shuttle; Rockwell underbid the B-1 program. When they ran out of money for the B-1 Bomber, they just embezzled the money from the shuttle program.  At some point they ran out of money for both programs and that how Lockheed wound up with the Space Shuttle contract.  At this point the Air Force came up with a 1000 mile cross range requirement which was not only excessive, but added to the cost.