$50 million

For a sale price, "30% off" is a fairly good bargain, depending on the merchandise. You can save a few dollars on clothing or furniture by comparison shopping. But if you want to send something or someone into space, comparison shopping may save you millions upon millions of dollars.

Right now NASA pays Russia $70 million to send one of our astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX has so far sent only cargo to the ISS for NASA, but plans to be able to send an astronaut by 2018. Elon Musk thinks they will be able do it for about $20 million.

If you follow SpaceX or this blog, you know why they will be able to do it for so much less:
re-usable rockets and capsules. The rockets Russia sends into space are only good for one trip, unusable after that.

SpaceX's investment and innovation in space travel is going to save American taxpayers about $50 million per astronaut. That's a good thing.

(cont'd tomorrow)