>I dunno; Reagan wanted a station pretty bad. If a crystal ball had allowed a true picture of the >cost, then I think NASA would've been sent back to the drawing board with orders to scale it >down to a more affordable version.

If I recall that’s exactly what happened. The original design I remember seeing was an enormous rectangular truss with the cylindrical labs mounted on a truss across the center of the rectangle. Various astronomical and earth observing instruments, and power generators were to be mounted around the truss. When they realized what it would cost and how difficult it would be to build then started the repeated redesigns. Now all that’s left is the center truss with solar panels and some of the attached cylindrical labs and living quarters, and probably at about what the original cost estimate was. It’s just a shadow of the original plan.