I’m kind of surprised (though pleasantly, if true) at the estimated cost of the contract to Boeing for the Ares 1 upper stage:

The $514.7 million cost-plus-award fee contract runs through 2016 and covers the manufacture of a ground test article, three flight test units and six production flight units.

So they’re getting about ten units altogether for half a billion? Even if the development costs are zero, that’s only about fifty megabucks a copy. If we assume that it’s a couple hundred millions for DDT&E, that’s only about thirty million each. I’m sure that the J2-X will be cheaper than an SSME, but I would think it’s still going to cost several million dollars per engine. I would have guessed that the stage cost was higher. These numbers imply to me that, with learning (and I guess it helps that NASA provides the production facilities at Michaud–I’ll bet that’s not included in the costs stated above) that they could get the marginal cost per stage down in the twenty-five million range or less.

Better news for sustainability than I would have thought. I wonder what the cost of the first stage is?

[Thursday update]

OK, there seems to be a consensus in the comments that this price doesn’t include engine or avionics (those are separate contracts), which is where a lot of the cost of a stage lies. So it’s not that great a deal. I thought it was too good to be true.