early/bootstrap system costs?

Perhaps I didn't write as tentatively as I felt about it. I thought
I tried to speculate that an LEO station could possibly be had for as
low as a few hundred million, but more likely several hundred million.
I have seen reasonable quotes from AIAA & other studies that say
this should be possible. (Of course, if you let NASA & Lock/Mart have
their way, the exact same system will be hundreds of billions, and
this is why it's so difficult to believe these lower numbers.)
I have also seen proposals for early, small, and very limited Lunar
(possibly NEA) mine/bases which could possibly be as cheap. None of
them are crewed -they all accept the limitations of telerobotics. Noe
of them try to extend operations into the night, and hardly any of
them try to do any processing beyond some sifting on the Lunar
surface.

None of these use Shuttle if they can help it, and nobody in their
right mind suggests use of the ISS could ever be cheap, even if
possible.

The stations could be something like ET stations, probably heavily
modified and lifted by Shuttle-C or some unmanned booster. NASA can't
have anything to do with it, or the cost jumps vastly.
Something like Pioneer or Kistler would definately help, but there's
litle way to see that any such thing could be of much use, beyond
some little support.
Going around NASA big-government spending (porkbarrel) programs is a
prerequisite. Since it hasn't been done, you're probably correct in
that it's impossible. Why should they sell to a private outfit, when
they can charge the government several times the rational amount?

Note that I am specifying an early, small, limited system for
bootstrapping & proving systems. You won't build the full
infrastructure for space colonies, SSPS, Lunar mine, etc. Period. The
governemnt won't do it, and no private firm will ever do anything of
that scale.
There is some room for believing that an early system for initiating
one individual part of such an infrastructure could be had for not
too much more than some big development projects on Earth.
(On the other hand, I've heard that the largest start-up investment
for a private company in a new field was $30 million, for FedEx.)

Perhaps each little startup part of an infrastructure could be
within the range of (tentatively a few to) several hundred millions.
Pioneer or Kistler could each be one example, and an early tether
boostsystem for sending small loads Earth-Moon could be another.
Maybe a laser lightcraft boost facility?

I am fairly certain that there's no good reason why a Shuttle launch
costs over half a billion (unless you accept all the justifications
of NASA's decisions to build ISS and use Shuttle as they have.)
Couldn't a modified ET/Shuttle-C launch stack be less than several
hundred billion (what NASA would probably need to do it)

> John Frazer wrote:
>> Actually I doubt that the initial investment for
>>a total SSPS infrastructure could be much less than
>>this "many hundreds of millions".
>
> One large communication satellite launch costs about $80 million.
> One medium LEO launch costs about $30.
> SPSS is going to cost a lot more than "many hundreds of millions."
>
>> However, the initial LEO station might be (a few
>>hundred million, up to) several hundred millions,
>>and a similar amount for a Lunar mine. After these
>>2 things are up, the system should be able to
>>bootstrap itself.
>
> This estimate is extremely low. An average new, large airport
costs
about a billion dollars. At present, we have no way to get the moon
at all, much less build a mine there. We can't make machinary that
will survive the lunar night. We don't have power plants that will
work on the Moon. We can imagine how all this might work, but we
can't do it at the moment.
> Doing is a lot harder than imagining. Airports don't even require
new technology, just application of what's already well known and
currently in operation.