Even though NASA has enabled and supported the development of commercial space launch, its success may compete with NASA’s in-house rocket development and disrupt NASA’s current vision of space exploration. NASA appears much less willing than some in the military to accept and exploit the new lower launch costs. This is especially true in life support, where the key choice is between direct supply of consumables with high launch mass versus recycling to reduce launch mass. Recycling was long thought thought to be necessary on all long human missions due to the historically very high launch cost per kilogram. Now resupply may be much cheaper as well as much more reliable than recycling. (Jones, 2017-87) Some in NASA think the new lower launch costs are exaggerated or even nonexistent. In 2008, NASA signed a contract with SpaceX for 12 launches at a cost of $1.6 billion. NASA payload specialist and space station engineer Ravi Margasahayam, speaking as a private citizen, stated, “My cost per pound went up with these rockets. On the shuttle, it would be much less.” “Margasahayam points out that, while the space shuttles were more expensive — a whopping $500 million per launch (or possibly $1.5 billion, according to one analysis we've seen) — each mission carried about 50,000 lbs. (plus seven astronauts!). That means each pound of cargo used to cost about $10,000 to ship on a shuttle.” “For SpaceX - the cheapest of NASA's new carriers - dividing the cost of each launch ($133 million) by the cargo weight of its most recent resupply mission (5,000 lbs.) gives you about $27,000 per pound
International Conference on Environmental Systems ($59.5 k/kg).

But that's a high estimate. SpaceX told Tech Insider that its Dragon cargo spacecraft launched on a Falcon 9 rocket can carry up to 7,300 lbs.” (Kramer and Mosher, 2016) How do these numbers check? For space shuttle, the quoted article notes that Margasahayam’s cost to launch was too low. (Kramer and Mosher, 2016) Using $1.5 billion rather than $500 million would increase his computed shuttle launch cost by a factor of three, to $30,000 per pound or $66 k/kg. And there is a further correction. The shuttle carried 27,500 kg (60,000 lb) to LEO, but only 16,050 kg (35,380 lb) to ISS. (Wikipedia, Space Shuttle) A better cost for shuttle launch to ISS is $1.5 billion/16,050 kg = $93.4 k/kg. And the SpaceX potential payload to ISS is 6,000 kg. (Spacex.com, 2018) (Wikipedia, SpaceX Dragon) 133 million/6,000 kg = $22.2 k/kg. This shows that SpaceX provides a cost reduction to ISS by a factor of 4. A more direct calculation in Appendix B gives a similar result.
The NASA engineer’s casual analysis made two mistaken assumptions that favored shuttle over commercial launch. They may be derived from similar mistakes in an earlier NASA estimate provided to Congress. The space shuttle cost per pound to ISS was “Calculated assuming four missions per year with a capability to deliver 16 metric tons (35,264 pounds) to the space station at a total annual program cost of $3.0 Billion. $3,000,000,000 ÷ (4 flights × 35,264 pounds/flight) = $21,268 per pound.” (U.S. House of Representatives, 2011, p. 5) This $21,268 per pound is equivalent to $46.8 k/kg and is too low by half because of the too low by half ($750 million) shuttle cost per launch. The NASA estimate supplied to the House for commercial resupply to ISS was $26.77 k/lb or $58.9 k/kg, which is similar to the cost for Falcon 9 of $59.5 k/kg computed above, which was based on the 2008 contract cost and actual rather than potential payload. Some comments were critical, such as “the numbers announced by this House report are garbage.” (Zimmerman, 2011) Unlike the military, which embraced and emphasized the benefits of lower space launch cost, NASA has denied and clearly underestimated them.