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Skylab construction cost: 10 billion in modern dollars

ISS construction cost: 150 billion

ISS science projects keep on getting cancelled for budget reasons. I think spending $150,000,000,000.00 building it has something to do with that.




Skylab was cheap(er) because it was launched in one single stage (IIRC it literally was a Saturn V cargo bay).

The ISS was designed to be built up over several years, over several launches, with each launch costing much less than Skylab but obviously more overall. It was a design decision that favoured amortizing costs for an age that couldn't afford another Skylab.




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