Yesterday, while I was reading a post on the Bad Astronomy blog, I came across this comment:
Imagine how many Hubbles could be orbiting, if billions had not been poured down the money-gurgler that is the ISS.
I encounter similar comments frequently enough while reading different blogs. While the construction of the International Space Station was expensive, the ISS is an invaluable structure and not for the reasons many people would think. The station may have taken 30 space shuttle flights and countless Russian Soyuz and Proton launches over the last 11 years to build to the tune of something over $100 billion. Of course, had Congress allowed NASA to continue with the Saturn V and Saturn 1B launches, a comparable space station could have been built with only 3 launches of Saturn V within a year at less than a quarter of the ISS costs. What is more we would have had it up in running in the mid-1970's instead of nearly 40 years later.