Regardless of whether the Shuttle or an upper stage like ATV are used, these are expensive transportation systems. Currently, the dedicated cost to the US of one Shuttle launch is around $400 million, based on a NASA estimate which does not include NASA salaries or on-going Shuttle development and improvement activities. If such costs are factored in, the dedicated launch cost could be as high as $750-1.000 million. [16] For the purposes of this analysis, a figure of 500 MAU (i.e. $ 600 million) will be used. Therefore, as the Shuttle can deliver about 20 tonnes to a Freedom orbit (assuming use of the Advanced Solid Rocket Boosters), this leads to a specific launch cost of about 25,000 AU per kilogramme. In the case of the ATV, these costs will obviously depend largely on the Ariane 5 launch costs and flight rate, as well as the cost and flight rate of the ATV itself. For the purposes of this analysis, a dedicated launch cost of 250 MAU will be used, including all ground operations. Therefore, as the Ariane 5/ATV could deliver about 15 tonnes to Freedom, this leads to a specific launch cost of about 17,000 AU per kilogramme. The Ariane 5/ATV costs are not so important for this analysis, but are provided purely for comparison purposes for the proposed EMSI. 5.3 Economic Analysis Technique The analysis uses a spreadsheet technique that achieves the following basic objectives: 1. Calculates the annual operational cost to launch the propellant and battery mass for the 75 kW Assembly Complete Freedom configuration. 2. Calculates how much of this annual mass could be saved if Powersats were used.
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