cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/8492861

Interesting tidbit:

Some assessments have shown the cost of doing research on a suborbital human spaceflight vehicle, like the ones flown by Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin, is about one-tenth the cost of flying a fully automated science payload on a conventional suborbital sounding rocket.

I wouldn’t have expected that human spaceflight could be cheaper than non-human spaceflight in some cases.