Is that really true? I'm guessing a big part of the cost is figuring out how to actually invent stuff needed for the project. That knowledge is now known. That cost is now 0.
>There's very little in the way of savings because most parts are custom fabricated. The parts need to be tested, integrated, then tested after integration.
To piggy back on the the GP's point, the fabrication research is only one small cost center. Quality control costs much more in aerospace than many people realize. The reason why a bolt may cost $150 is because it has to be tracked, material coupons kept/tracked/tested, held in bonded storage etc. and not because we had to figure out how to make a bolt. Those costs don't come down as much with scale as, say, raw material.
If it were all about knowledge costs, many designs today would be dramatically cheaper because many use technology (and even refurbished rockets) from 50 years ago.
> I'm guessing a big part of the cost is figuring out how to actually invent stuff needed for the project.
We're talking about marginal costs, not development costs. So the cost to invent a component is already out of the equation. The high production cost of something like Hubble comes from testing and validation more than materials or fabrication.
The failure modes for something big in space can be extremely dangerous. Even a tiny "cheap" cubesat requires a lot of relatively expensive testing so there's a reasonable assurance it won't fail in some catastrophic fashion and destroy the entire rocket.
Testing space hardware is additionally difficult because you can only just approximate the hardware's operating environment on the ground. Space hardware also can't be easily repaired or repaired at all once launched. So you've got to test actual flight hardware and if it fails possibly rebuild it from scratch testing and validating the entire way.
Developing space hardware and high precision science instruments is expensive and difficult. But it's just a small portion of the overall mission cost for something like Hubble or JWST.
I defer to your knowledge, i'm not trying to be a jerk. But Hubble took like 30 years? or so to develop and build? How long would a second Hubble take? I'd have to imagine it's less than 5 years, no? That has to be a huge cost savings. The testing process would have to be more streamlined or efficient, i would think. You have a much better understanding of failure modes.
The Hubble took a little over ten years to build and develop. It's launch was postponed to 1990 because of the Challenger disaster.
> The testing process would have to be more streamlined or efficient, i would think.
Why do you automatically assume testing for a complicated and delicate machine is inefficient or not streamlined? That's a pretty bold assumption with zero evidence.
Understanding failure modes doesn't help test and validate something any faster. There's a finite number of hours in a day and components need some proscribed amount of testing.
Hubble took ~12 years from initial funding to launch with the challenger disaster postponing it 4 years out of that. Additionally if the decision was made to use traditional mirror techniques the Hubble was predicted to launch in 5 years already, instead of the difficulty they found with the alternative method but they didn't know that at the outset.
You will encounter different bias the second time around. Although maybe this kind of stuff is less common in space industry. People could want to correct the mistakes of the first time. Spend time optimising things and taking more time. And people could take learned knowledge for granted and assume success was based on that.
