There’s an interesting (if not entirely accurate) history of the ill-fated X-38 program in the Houston Chronicle today. However, being the Houston Chronicle, it has a NASA-centric bias. I’ll probably put up a longer discussion of this issue in the next couple days, and it may be the basis of my Fox column on Thursday. Suffice it for now to say that, in my humble opinion, this was an extremely flawed concept, in both requirements and design. Killing it may force some rationality on JSC and the space station partners.

But just let me point out at least one instance of sloppy reporting, or economic ignorance.

Though it no longer has a mission, the one-of-a-kind X-38 orbital test plane will have a market value of $1.4 billion once the assembly is finished, according to two appraisals sought by NASA. That is what it would cost somebody else to build the same craft.

There is a confusion here of two different economic concepts–value and cost.

I can readily believe that it would cost $1.4B to build another vehicle like this to NASA’s specifications. That doesn’t mean that it would have a “market value” of that amount. Value is simply what someone is willing to pay for it on the market.

No one would value it at that price other than NASA. And no one would pay such ridiculous costs for human space access, other than NASA. As long as NASA makes the market, costs will continue to be high.