Ignore the chest beating by Congressman Weldon in this press release about the NASA decision to move Shuttle Orbiter refurbishment from Palmdale, CA to the Cape. This is a good example of why space is expensive.

A little history: the Orbiters (the part of the Shuttle that actually carries the people and payload to orbit, and comes back) were built by Rockwell in their old North American assembly facility up in Palmdale, in the desert north of Los Angeles. Back when they were being tested out of Edwards AFB, a few miles north, and landing there, it made sense to do modifications and upgrades there as well. In addition, there were originally plans for the Shuttle to launch out of Vandenberg AFB a hundred miles west on the coast.

But since Challenger, any planned Vandenberg Shuttle operations were abandoned, and almost all flights landed in Florida as well as taking off there. They only land in California now if the weather doesn’t allow a Florida landing. Thus, the center of gravity of the Shuttle program has really shifted to the Sunshine State, ever since the late 1980s. At that point, it would have made sense to just do the refurbishment at the Cape as well, saving quite a bit of money in infrastructure.

But politics reared its ugly head, as it always does on government programs. Rockwell (now Boeing) and the California congressional delegation lobbied to keep the work out there, and the Clinton Administration, always sensitive to Golden State concerns, obliged.

That was then, this is now. A confluence of events have conspired to get the government to finally do the right thing, even if (as is usually the case) for the wrong reason. In the wake of the space station fiasco, NASA desperately needs to find cost savings. George W. Bush, though he’d never admit it, has probably written off California. And Palmdale will probably get enough new defense business to make up for the loss anyway, given Mr. Rumsfeld’s predilections. And the President’s brother is governor of Florida, with a reelection coming up this year.

So Congressman Weldon saw an opportunity to finally get the Shuttle work brought to the Cape, and he seized it. As a result, NASA will save tens, perhaps hundreds of millions in costs of ferrying Orbiters back and forth between coasts, and the overhead costs of the facility in Palmdale. Thus, the cost of Shuttle launches will drop a little, on average, in future years.

Add up dozens of stories like this, big and small, and it becomes clear that high launch costs are not because it takes thirty-thousand feet per second of velocity difference to get to orbit, but because it takes votes from lots of different Congressman. And this will remain the case until we develop a viable and robust commercial launch industry.