Debunking the Trillion-Dollar Space Myth

jfoust writes "When the President and NASA announced the agency's new space initiative, including sending humans back to the Moon and on to Mars, many news reports claimed that the plan could cost as much as $1 trillion. According to this Space Review article, that trillion-dollar price tag is a myth: it was based on erroneous data and analysis, in large part by a single Associated Press reporter, and propagated by many other reporters too busy -- or too lazy -- to check on the facts. Could this kill the plan before it has a chance to start?"

What?

A reporter not checking facts? I'm shocked I tell you!

Next thing you know, you'll be telling me that someone on slashdot did the same thing!

Re:Is not a trillion, what is it?

Uh, that's a takeoff on a quote attributed to American congressman Everett Dirksen. "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money. [dirksencenter.org]"

Re:Is not a trillion, what is it?

Original quote was "A billion here a billion there, after a while you're talking real money!" and was atributed to Evert Dirksen of Illinois. Actually, if you amertise the cost of the 60s NASA programs as development e costs of doing business in the creation of: computers, chips, Intenret, out modern culture/ technology/ and all our jobs/ etc. It comes out cheap. And besides: we got Velcro, Teflon and Tang thrown in for free!

Teflon and chips came from the Manhattan project

Teflon was developed in the 1930s, but the ability to stick it to metal was the thing preventing its widespread use. During the Manhattan Project, they really needed PolyTetraFlouroEthylene (aka PTFE, generic name for Teflon) for its resistance to highly corrosive gases used in gaseous diffusion. So large amounts of effort were spent discovering how to stick it to metal. PTFE was used as a bearing in the pump and centrifuge areas of the gaseous diffusion plants. Next time you pick up a non-stick frying pan, you should remember that it was made possible by the nuclear bomb.

Using PTFE for bearings for satellites were the first non-top-secret uses. So the space program gets the credit for something that really came out of the Manhattan Project.

The technology to refine germanium and later silicon to the levels of purity needed for semiconductors also came out of the Manhattan project.

The first electronic computer, Colossus, was developed to break German codes during WW2. ENIAC predated NASA by around 15 years.

Oh, and one last thing, Arpanet, the origin of the Internet was NOT a NASA program, it was a different government program. Nice try though.

Re:Is not a trillion, what is it?

I would gripe at you for not reading the article, but the server is only barely responsive.

Quick summary: The trillion dollar figure was based on the $500 billion number that the George Bush Sr. presidency came up with during its own initiative. That number was rounded up to $800 billion to adjust for inflation, and then rounded up yet again to produce a nice, round $1 trillion.

Finally, the master stroke: While the original estimate was for 34 years of operations on both the moon and Mars, the reporter claimed $1 trillion to be the cost of a single Mars landing.

Once it hit the news, everyone else copied it, and the public perception grew that this would be a fiscally irresponsible program.

Re:Is not a trillion, what is it?

I dunno... I think that if a permanent manned base on the moon and a fairly comprehensive exploratory trip to Mars could be made for $500B, that might not be too bad a deal. The mineral rights for the moon alone could be worth quite a lot. Titanium and aluminum are found in vast quantities in some areas in the form of ores that, while not the preferred source on earth, are still quite usable. An abundance of electrical energy without any worries about what tailings might harm or kill may make for a very attractive investment.

The biggest question is how you get them safely back to earth, or how the manufacturing facilities are set up on the moon.

Re:Is not a trillion, what is it?

Not really. You have to remember that Apollo was creating technology on the way. WE ALREADY HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY TO DO IT TODAY. What we need is the following:

1. Heavy lifters for putting 100+ tons per launch into Low Earth Orbit. Energia Vulkan can do 200 metric tons. The Space Shuttle's engines can lift ~150 metric tons. We just need to remove the 117 metric ton shuttle out of the equation.

2. A cheap method for taking people and light cargo (read: only a few tons) into LEO. A nuclear thermal powered space plane would do nicely here. If 100% of the hardware that goes up comes back down, we'll be in good shape. It's okay if it exhausts radiation as long as it doesn't exhaust radioactive isotopes. (The radiation will disperse within seconds, but radioisotopes hang around for years.)

3. Space only, nuclear thermal rockets for missions to the moon and Mars.

Here's the plan:

Use your heavy lifters to throw a *useful* space station into Low Earth Orbit. This station should act as a construction yard and staging point. Construction crews can be ferried up via space plane.

The space plane should only be launched over the ocean to prevent accidentally raining down debris on people. On return flight, it should come down over the ocean, then make a controlled flight back to the coast.

At the station, the crews should construct the Moon/Mars craft and ready it for departure. The moon would be easy for an NTR rocket. A trip of a day or less would be feasible. If we've got our heads screwed on straight, we can use these craft to start mining the moon and nearby asteroids. This will allow us to return expensive materials to LEO for a very low cost.

Once a Mars craft is built and successfully deployed to Mars (with its own NTR spaceplane on board for landing maneuvers), the station and other hardware should be rented out to commercial enterprises. These guys can then look at making a business out of the infrastructure in place and create a new space economy

Cost figures:

Engergia Vulkan Factory Retooling: 10-15 million

Energia Launch: ??? (probably ~20-50 million per)

Station Construction: 3-7, 100-200 metric ton modules built of traditional building materials. (No expensive composites!!!) ~$10 Million per module.

Construction Equipment: ??? Fill in with standard metalworks and fab costs

Nuclear Thermal Spaceplane: This should use as much proven technology as possible. Development would be expensive (Let's say $1-3 billion) but the cost savings per flight would more than make up for those costs.

Nuclear Thermal Interplatery Craft: Depends on how large you want it. The bigger it is, the more costly it is. You could probably splurge and build it for $10 billion.

If you add up the worst case figures, you're still not even approaching 100 billion. And once the infrastructure is in place, you now have a new economic frontier to explore.

FWIW, this is not science fiction. We have all these technologies today. Unfortunately, fear of nuclear power combined with several non-space administrations (Nixon, Carter, and Clinton) have stopped us from making it a reality. Arguably, Apollo happened before we had mature technology, so that was a factor in things taking so long. One way or another, Space could give our economy explosive growth, and could do so on ~10 years of NASA budget.

Re:Not even close

according to the navy, a bare-bones aircraft carrier costs $4.5 Billion

And holds 4,000 crew members, weighs ~17,500 tons, contains 5 acres of deck space, and has engines capable of 30+ knots around the world, non-stop. Scale it back to a craft weighing somewhere between 100-300 metric tons, burning hydrogen for a 4-8 month trip, and the $10 billion figure should look a bit more reasonable.

Re:Not even close

Your argument would make sense if a navy aircraft carrier could fly.

nice idea

making the world a better place so we don't need nuclear weapons

How are you going to do this with all the humans that live here?

No matter how nice it gets, you can't make the world a nice enough place to keep groups of people from wanting to kill each other, it is our nature...

(I am not saying that we shouldn't try...)

Re:nice idea

You should revisit 'Lord of the Flies'.

Re:sounds cheap compared to...

The cost of colonizing our solar system (which for self-contained colonies probably will far exceed one trillion) can be better spent on asteroid surveillance and making the world a better place so we don't need nuclear weapons.

Um, what's the point of asteroid surveillance if you don't have nukes to take them out with anymore? You want to send a mission to divert the asteroid? Wouldn't it be easier, and cheaper just to have somebody up there already to do that?

Instead of observing asteroids, let's mine em. That way, if we get a rogue one headed for earth, we'll have plenty of mining equipment up there that can land on the bugger while it's still a ways away, and strip it of enough mass to divert it or make it a non-threat.

Can't do any of that if we're still huddled on the ground. Besides, don't think of the 1 trillion as a non-returnable cost, but as insurance (putting humanity in more than one place) with a future annunity (resource extraction, a new frontier for the adventurous, cheaper space access, and a lot more business for manufacturing both here on the ground, and in space.)

Re:sounds cheap compared to...

Instead of observing asteroids, let's mine em. That way, if we get a rogue one headed for earth, we'll have plenty of mining equipment up there that can land on the bugger while it's still a ways away, and strip it of enough mass to divert it or make it a non-threat.

Hey! Yeah! Maybe we can send Bruce Willis and a bunch of oil riggers to drive around the asteroid in a dune buggy on steroids setting nuclear charges.... Oh, wait, they did that in a (really bad) movie already.

I can't believe you got modded up as "Insightful."

-matthew

Re:sounds cheap compared to...

I'd place the likelyhood of a nuclear war rendering Earth uninhabitable higher if we did have perminate self-supporting settlements elsewhere, than if we stay on earth. So long as we are confined to earth, politicians cannot make planet destroying scale wars on others without affecting themselves. Once we have other planets you can attack someone else and not kill yourself. (though retaliation is still a factor)

Even still it is worth while to get people to other planets. I just don't know if we should look outside of the Solar System now, or wait a few (hundred/thousand?) years for faster travel so that would pass those earlier ships in flight...

BZZT, human colonization no where in the cards

Where are you going to live? Mars? Haha living on Mars requires a supply train from Earth for a long long time. Hint - its a dead rock. Okay, you find some bacteria there. I hope you can eat it.

A Mars program is not going to protect you from environmental concerns or war, which will probably impact you in the next fifty years. There is nowhere remotely inhabitable anywhere near us we could have any hope of colonizing in a sustainable way in the time frame.

Re:BZZT, human colonization no where in the cards

There is nowhere remotely inhabitable anywhere near us we could have any hope of colonizing in a sustainable way in the time frame.

Well, NASA says that they might be able to turn New Jersey into a viable colony through only minimal terraforming... about 50 years I think it was. So cheer up!

Re:sounds cheap compared to...

some rouge asteriod

Well at least it wasn't a rogue rouge asteroid, they are some bad mofos, heaps worse than the verte and bleu asteroids, rogue or not.

Re:sounds cheap compared to...

Consider the expense...and energy involved to put 2 people on the moon....There are about 6.4 billion in the world that would require a great deal of resources to cram onto Saturn 5 lifeboats and boost into space. If we were greedy there are just shy of 300 million folks in US. So on the surface, at least in the near term, we need to solve our problems on our planet...cause most of us are stuck here for our alloted time.

This issue struck me in a NPR piece interviewing kids at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum shortly after Bush's speech. A majority of the kids thought of manned space travel as an escape from a disposable used up world. How sad really. Of all the motivations for going to the Moon or Mars, escaping a ruined Earth is about the least pratical.

I hope someone is able to put space exploration into an inspiring context that motivates people to achieve at a high level doing great things for great reasons, rather through a cynical appeal to our worst fears and selfish agendas.

I'm just curious

Let's just say it MIGHT cost $1 trillion. I have always wondered, where/how exactly is all that money spent? Why does it cost so much?

Re:I'm just curious

FWIW-

I used to do oversight work on contractors that did gov't jobs.

The lowest bidder (usually) got the contract, but then, whatever they could charge Uncle Sam with a straight face (unforeseen delays, cost overruns, etc) the US paid without comment.

So a typical job of 250,000$, when it was all said and done, might actually have cost the gov't over 600,000$. Now start adding multiple contractors to a huge undertaking like this (one builds the suits, another the food, a third the life support, etc) and you can *easily* see where the original figure paled in comparison to the final pricetag, with most of that simply being pork and profit.

the original Moon project gave back to us

We didn't need small computers until we went to the Moon the first time. Many watches today have more computing power than the entire LEM but the computer that went to the Moon was the start of the real push to get things miniaturized and lightweight. Going to the Moon again just to go there and make sure the flags are still standing up would be a waste IMO but going there to stay and/or going to Mars would end up inventing new ideas and refining existing ideas to the point where we'd get a good return on them. The Shuttle and ISS don't return much because they aren't doing anything new, but a long-term space habitation like a (semi-)permanent Moon base or a 2-3 year Mars mission would likely yield dividends we could use to make life better on earth.

Yes, but consider the costs of computers.

Just out of wondering, has anybody totted up the cost of desktop computers, to the business sector alone?

The document that used to take a secretary 5 minutes to type and 1 minute to correct with white-out, now takes 25 minutes (bootup, multiple printings to make sure it's attractive, distraction of Solitaire, Network administrator's time, etc) or more.

That's just the letter.

Now consider all the time wasted by people surfing the net for useful sites like slashdot. Or blogs. Or checking email. Or logging on to the modem, for that matter. Or clearing spam.

My goodness -- how much time do we waste each day, just clearing spam? That wasn't a part of our lives before.

I think that if you tott up the cost to business of having desktop computers available, you will find that the moon program easily cost over $1 trillion dollars.

gov't, consultant and contractor waste?

This article in Spacedaily [spacedaily.com] does a good job of explaining why Bush's costs are both too much and too little to do what he wants. I love the quote:

This is what John Pike means when he says that the budget "won't even pay for the artwork." (Pike is exaggerating the situation by a factor of about 2. I am not aware of any single NASA program costing more than about $3B that produced only artist's concepts. X-30/NASP cost about $7.5B in current dollars, and part of one X-30 fuel tank was actually fabricated.)

If $3B can manage to pay off consultants to think deep thoughts about a project and an artist to draw up a rendering then $1T isn't really that much in the world of gov't finance, high payed consultants and contractors used to dealing with the military where any price goes. It would be interesting to see what an X-Prize sized budget passed 100km orbit would look like.

This guy should post on Slashdot.

"Humor writer Dave Barry, however, may have summarized the situation the best. "The Bush administration says the Mars mission can be accomplished for only 143.8 zillion dollars," Barry wrote. "But critics claim that the true cost is likely to be much more like 687 fillion dillion dollars. (These numbers are imaginary, but trust me, they're as accurate as any other cost estimates you see about the Mars mission.)""

Re:The goverment pays extra for waste...

And why not? In some parts of Vegas, $500 is the market price for a screw...

Re:The goverment pays extra for waste...

Just to add to what you said...
I work for a government contractor involved in a program where high-reliability and traceability and other non-standard requirements are vital. So, yes, we may pay 10 to 100 times the commercial cost for a transistor that is electrically identical to one you could buy at Radio Shack for $0.50. However, we are purchasing a known assembly process, lot-date code traceability and lots of extra screening and testing, all of which is necessary, and none of which you get with your cheap Radio Shack transistor. And contrary to popular belief, we do not get a blind eye if we overrun or deliver sub-par products. Those things lead to lost award fees, which in turn makes share holders mighty angry. So, when people start whining about the "excessive" cost of military and space electronics, they need to remember that sending a man to Mars or the Moon is not a garage hobby project.

Totally bunk

I mean, how the hell are we going to put a man on Mars for 1 trillion dollars when it takes <dr="evil">one hundred billion dollars</dr> alone to keep a laser on the moon from destroying Earth?

Really people, think it through.

- sm

$1 trillion can go very quickly...

It could easily cost at least one trillion dollars over the next 20+ years to get humans to Mars. Look at how much the U.S. thought it would cost originally to get to the Moon, $10-20 billion. And you know they spent way more than that actually doing it. $20+ billion to get the Moon 30+ years ago can easily translate to $1+ trillion to get to Mars in the next 20 years.

You also must consider all of the technologies that were gained and/or improved during the race to the Moon. Computers, communications and fuel cells is just the very short list. What do you think one trillion dollars can get us this time around? Perhaps IPv6 deployment.

Re:$1 trillion can go very quickly...

If Dad can be believed, there was plenty of good tang around before Apollo...

Re:$1 trillion can go very quickly...

The issue is, though, that NASA doesn't have the funding to do this. And Bush isn't going to give it to them, as that would disastrously breach the image of a "small-government" President that he tries (sometimes successfully) to project. Its an electon-day pledge to try and make him look like a visionary and nothing more, and will wind up in the dustbin of history as soon as he gets re-elected.

Is this supprising?

It seems like more and more that people are just printing/reporting what ever "facts" they come across to forward their own agenda.

A good example is that story that ran last week where they almost banned styrofoam cups because they read on some kid's website about the dangers of "di-hydrogen monoxide" (Water) or whatever the scientific name is.

Re:Is this supprising?

The bottom line is -- a manned mission to Mars is going to cost an enormous freaking pile of money, and no one can estimate the size of the pile with even moderate precision.

I can't get too upset for reporters using "$1 trillion" as a metaphor for "unknown but freaking enormous pile of money" -- it's not like this is a bond issue. Or (and I'm saying this as a likely but not certain Bush voter) the shamelessness with the cost of the Medicare bill.

the president's plan won't stop it?

Well, the president's plan only calls for an additional $500m/year of NASA funding (2/3 the cost of the current unmanned probes), so who's kidding who?

Reporter Michael Bolton was heard to say:

"It's probably a misplaced decimal point....I always screw up some mundane detail like that"

The trillion dollar figure won't die

Nobody can estimate the price tag of sending a earthling to Mars. So the 1 trillion figure is a good way of saying "it'll be very, very, very expensive". In fact, the figure is too round to be taken seriously, and the real price could be much lower, but also much higher.

No, NASA can handle it just fine themselves

This trillion-dollar figure may hurt the program yes, but two other things will have much more impact:

1) Bush does not really care if it is funded or not. The speech and goals are just political mumbo-jumbo, like his AIDS research promises...
2) NASA is more than adept at killing projects themselves. Money is tight here now (I work at NASA and am embroiled in the CEV start-up operations) and NASA is terrible at managing a tight-budget program like this would have to be.

Beuracracy will kill this program before any "reporter", trust me.

--rhad

Re:No, NASA can handle it just fine themselves

1) Bush does not really care if it is funded or not. The speech and goals are just political mumbo-jumbo, like his AIDS research promises...
2) NASA is more than adept at killing projects themselves. Money is tight here now (I work at NASA and am embroiled in the CEV start-up operations) and NASA is terrible at managing a tight-budget program like this would have to be.

^^^ Precisely the point of the article. It seems that people of a certain political bent are willing to condemn and set aside ANY goal, no matter how admirable, or how much they would have supported said goal if it wasn't THIS PRESIDENT promoting it.

Look at point number one, above. Stated as unassailable fact, this person clearly has such a terrific AXE to grind, they aren't interested in even considering that it might be simply true. They just slap on their tinfoil hats and rant because it is George W. Bush.

Just like his AIDS initiative you say? He committed $15 Billion - 3x the US gov't's previous funding. You say it's smoke & mirrors, but the money's already flowing.

Re:No, NASA can handle it just fine themselves

If this initiative were actually funded, it would be a tremendous boon to the US economy -- we've been suffering from at best blind-sighted and at worst disingenuous supply-side economics policies (ie major tax cuts) at a time when what we really needed was large-scale government spending to provide real economic stimulus.

A space program would also be specially targeted towards the underemployed.

However, this administration has a history of mendacity (this is undeniable) and of putting forth poorly-thought-out "bold, visionary" plans that wind up making things worse by being unfunded (eg No Child Left Behind). That's strikes one and two.

But it could still be a home run, without the real kicker, strke three -- the plan proposes to make the cuts in other research now, but actually getting somewhere with the other research much much later. That's the part about this that I don't trust -- no one will be around to see this plan through to completion, so it will probably get scrapped when the government is completely starved. The sacrifices are immediate but the rewards distant and uncertain? --> bogus.

Shocker: space industry reclassifies its own costs

Of course an industry zine is going to talk down the costs of space projects, particularly Mars. Its in their interests to get these projects past Congress.

Look at the reality though - ISS, Shuttle etc. Name one of these programs that has not overrun its budget by a substantial margin.

I'll do it for half that!

Heck, I'll even kick back in a hefty campaign contribution.

BTM

Myths and Lies

that trillion-dollar price tag is a myth

All the other price tags are just plain old lies.

Actual Cost Breakdown

After further investigation, the budget breakdown is as follows:

Space craft - $500 Million

Mission control &
Support crew - $2 Million

Fuel - $800 Thousand

Diebold navigation system - $20 Million

SCO license for onboard CPU's - $699 * 500

Anti Virus software to ensure Windows
based fire suppression system
isn't infected before liftoff - $200

Man hunt for someone smart enough
to operate the spacecraft yet dumb
enough to ride it to Mars - $1 Trillion

Re:Actual Cost Breakdown

Getting the cost approved during your presidential administration: Priceless....

Re:Poverty

"Things" will never be running smoothly down here. There will always always always be poor, hungry, and starving. You can imagine a uptopia in which no one is left wanting, but I can tell you: such a place could not be populated by humans.

The root of the problem is that most people just don't give a fuck, and even when they do: there are plenty of dishonest "donation operated" corporations to take thier money in the name of the poor.

Re:Poverty

This is a complex issue. On the one hand, the space program has many more benefits than initially aparent. Innumerable medical, technological, and biological discoveries have stemmed from NASA and the space program. These have disseminated into the public and have improved our overall quality of life. Presumably, similar discoveries would take place with such a large mission.

On the other hand, you are very right about the neglect of the poor and impoverished in our country. But I think this problem is one small part of an overarching social degradation. Organizations like the Red Cross are finding it harder to fund their programs. People don't give as much of their income to the poor anymore. And we have also become callous to the needs of those near us, in our own neighborhoods. Most people will not help someone that goes crawling past their door. This is partly due to the increased risk of crime (another growing social problem). But to feed and clothe all the people in the U.S. and the world will take action by individuals like us, and have a much larger impact that a government program that throws money... although that might help.

Plan never had a chance

Could this kill the plan before it has a chance to start? No, what will kill the plan is when NASA's responsibility is massively increased, but their funding only increases a few percent....

(The cynic in me noted the timing of W's announcement... "War? Death? um... Hey, Lookit the Moon! Lookit Mars! Perty, eh y'all?")

Actually

Amortized over a decade or more of work, $1 trillion doesn't seem so bad. Especially considering $100bn/year is a fraction of what we spend on our military.

Solution

There's a simple solution - I bet we can outsource it to India. They can probably send a guy there for a hundred bucks or so.

Whether or not he arrives in one piece, however, was a minor omission in the requirements document, much to his later dismay.

Re:why am i forced to pay for useless exploration?

July 20, 1969.

That day, two men touched down on the Moon, pointed their camera back towards the Earth, and a billion people all over the world sat awestruck at how very small and fragile we all are.

Damn it, this has never been about return on investment, or about finding spinoff technologies to make us rich. It's about curiosity, about a deep, compelling drive to explore the unknown, to drive it back, and to stand in wonder at what we find there.

If you want to turn the greatest of all human adventures into a simple TCO analysis, by all means go ahead. If you want to bitch about the government using your money to do it, go ahead. I'm sure I could find a few programs that you support that I would want to see eliminated.

$1 trillion

the plan could cost as much as $1 trillion

Yea, but what the reporter failed to mention was that this is Canadian dollars.

The whole mission will actually only cost $9.99. With a few subsidies...

So suppose it's only $100b

So suppose it's "only" $100 billion. Why, exactly, is it justified? We can do the science far more cheaply with robots, and if a robot burns up on entry, no one has to attend any funerals. The typical arguments I see on slashdot boil down to:

1. Space is cool.
   Yeah, and so are lots of things. Doesn't mean we should spend government money on it.
2. We can't stay on Earth forever.
   True, in billions of years the sun will swallow up the inner planets. More realistically, if we keep trashing the environment life will eventually be very uncomfortable for us. But space technology right now can send up a handful of astronauts at a time. We're not about to migrate overcrowded populations to the moon. (Human migrations in the past have all been much cheaper, even in relative terms.) The solutions to our problems on Earth should involve fixing our behavior on Earth, not giving up on it and fancifully migrating elsewhere.
3. Space exploration leads to technological spin-offs.
   Give me a break. If we want to sponsor scientific or technological research, we can do that much more efficiently by giving grants directly. Space research really hasn't produced much anyway, per dollar, compared to defence spending. It was the military, and not the space program, that drove the development of the microchip. The space program has given us... Tang. The "science experiments" done on the Shuttle nowadays are mostly nonsense anyway; the real ones could be done far more cheaply by robots anyway.

I support unmanned space exploration designed to further the pursuit of science. But manned space flight is incredibly expensive in comparison, doesn't really do much for us, and sucks resources away from real science.

Re:So suppose it's only $100b

There are basically two points to going to Mars. Both are valid, IMO. The first is basic scientific exploration; Has there been life on Mars? How much water is really there? Etc etc. Mars can tell us a lot about Earth while we're learning about Mars. The second is, just to put people there! Even with space elevators you're unlikely to make much of an impact on population (though you could try implementing birth rate controls and exporting people families with members who get pregnant too many times I guess) :)

Your message will be 100% correct when a robot on the ground can do as much as a human being there. In order for this to be true we need (besides advances in power storage and all the technologies involved in robotics) instaneous communications at least throughout the solar system, or true artificial intelligence. Since neither of these technologies are likely to be discovered in the near term, it is arguably worth sending humans on such journeys. You could also make the argument that we would do better to spend our efforts on exploring our own world, but the benefits of the space program to date have been enormous, and there is so much more to be done that I think equivalent strides can yet be made in its pursuit.

Manned space flight is expensive because we have not committed to a certain volume of it, at which point it will begin to drop in cost as we get better at it, then drop further once it has become commercialized. Ultimately our research into materials technologies is bringing us closer to affordable space travel. The less weight you need to loft the easier it becomes in general, the more power you have available the better, and the more efficient a system is, the better - this is all obvious but what might not be obvious is that all systems tend to do this over time and then be replaced by a system which typically has problems the current leader lacks but also has additional or greater capabilities in other areas. To wit, it's getting cheaper all the time. It's getting cheaper because we're trying to do it (and other related things) and we're solving problems in order to get there. Manned space flight is harder, so you'll encounter more problems, and provided you persevere, you'll solve more problems.

I think we've amply proven that manned spaceflight is a solvable problem (And now three nations have done so) so perhaps we should work on applying it for more than taking pictures and planting flags. This is not to cheapen the work done by astronauts on any mission which has been flown, but we could be doing so much more with technology which we have already utilized. With the advances since then, we ought to be able to go to Mars relatively cheaply.

But you do have to learn to walk before you can run, and we have been sending probes there. What we've learned since putting them on the ground has been enough to sharpen and even increase our resolve to go there, because it's (almost) all that we hoped it would be. (Obviously it didn't turn out to have a thick atmosphere.)

Make It Profitable And It Will Fly

Had NASA been allowed to sell and license its patents like a normal company on just 4 of the things it improved on during the 70's, microprocessors, cryogenics, medical telemetry and systems analysis software, it would have made 450% profit between the start of the Mercury project and the end of Apollo. Instead, we got the spinoffs which are fine for improved quality of life, and the companies that bought the patents made some money which is fine for some peoples' living standards, but the program itself suffered.

Want to get to Mars? Fund an aerospace skunkworks with NASA level funding and let them keep the profits from the inventions. And keep the damn adminimonsters out of it; let the engineers run it.

History of the figure

A little history on this is in order. Imagine wavy vertical lines transporting you back to the past.

The year is 1989 and I'm growing out a mullet. The first president Bush makes an attempt to rejuvenate NASA by setting Mars as a goal. Since he's a politician and not a scientist, he delegates the details to a group to give him a plan and price tag. What he got was the infamous 90-day [pescu.net] report. The 90-day report amounted to implementing a Mars exploration plan that included every pet project that NASA had. It involved building giant craft [starwars.com] in orbit, sending them to lumbering to Mars, have a crew land for 2 weeks and then go back to Earth. The estimated cost was an insane $450 billion which they comically expected to get. At the time, I was too concerned with getting my hands on a Sega Genesis to care or understand.

NASA had lost their minds and took the presidential initiative to mean that they were getting a blank check for everything they ever wanted to fund. King George the First saw the price and turned them down flat. He wasn't aware that there were any other ways to do it so it was slated to happen in "the future". Since then, there have been several [nw.net] different [marsinstitute.info] plans [nasa.gov] developed to get to Mars on a tight budget and stay there long enough to do some real science and establish a permanent presence.

Wavy lines back to the present.

Better ways to spend $XXX billion in space

We can get a space power demo satellite and infrastructure to support the construction of a global space powersat network for a comparable amount of money. [ecis.com]

I think a permanent solution to the energy crisis that leaves the US with no need for a Middle East political presence that costs a few hundred billion and creates millions of jobs can be sold to the American people.

I do not think that the American people either can or should be sold on a program which will mainly bring back some cool video of people wandering around collecting Mars rocks and the rocks themselves.

If we build a space industrial infrastructure, we will know how to get to Mars cheaply, comfortably, and safely.

We need space as a place to put industry. If we get industry up there, doing science up there will be cheap... it's a lot cheaper to send science grad students up if there's lab and housing space up there for them.

Popular Science

The April '04 edition of Popular Science has an interesting article about the top seven or so engineering projects/dream-projects today. One of them was the in/famous space elevator. What was particularly interesting was that the estimated cost was only $10 billion. (that's 1/10 of what the US has already spent in Iraq, for those counting)

Now I've always thought that the reason we aren't already building space elevators is because we haven't got anything strong enough for the cables. But according to the guy the $10 billion figure came from, all we need is a little more nanotube development and we're there.

Nasa's 12 billion dollar pen (sic)

I think there are people out there who still believe that nasa spend millions / billions of dollars to develop a pen that would work in outerspace. http://www.spacepen.com/usa/index2.htm

According to this site
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacep en.asp
there was a pen developed by Fisher, and sold 400 to nasa in the late 60s at a cost of $2.95 a piece. Also according to the site, over one million was spent by Fisher for development.

Now... i've heard references over the years regarding this pen, mostly jokes how the former Soviet Union's space program saved money by using pencils, and even as an illistration for NASAs over spending. The figure seems to range between 1 million all way to 12 billion in some cases. But regardless of whether Nasa actually spent money to develop this technology or not, it is still perceived by many to be a fact and not just an urban legend.

Should we really be suprised?

Come on, we are looking at the same ppl who reported that the space shuttle columbia was travelling at 9 times the speed of light when it cracked up. It was on CNN so it must be true...

At my college, journalism is an easy major - aka. you'd have to be retarded to get less than a 4.0 in it, the average journalism student is more interested in the college lifestyle (drinking your way through college so that at the end of it you wonder where the time went cause you don't remember the last four years, having more than sex than a trailer trash hoe), and if you had a cent for every iq point, the entire sum of their iqs together wouldn't get you a hamburger at MickeyD's. Then when they get out, its all about who you know, not what you know. In other words they get a rich uncle to get them on the air. Is anyone at all suprised to learn that the media is now as dumb as posts?

media myths

This article is very well written; it reminds me of the book by John Stossel that I am currently reading, "Give Me a Break." He points out how reporters have no problems with drawing illogical conclusions or making things up if 'big business' is being pilloried, but if one points out the ineffectiveness and stupidity of government programs, he is proclaimed by the fruit-n-granola crowd to be 'a shill of big business.'

Size of the challenge

Speaking in generalities: It takes approximately as much energy to go from low earth orbit (LEO) to escape velocity as it takes to go from the launch pad to LEO. In other words you must lift as much additional fuel to LEO as it took to get the object to LEO. The Space Shuttle is one of the most efficient lift systems (but the Russians and US have done quite well with big dumb rockets--it just takes a lot more fuel). It takes approximately 3 million pounds of fuel to lift the very efficient 200,000 pound Shuttle into orbit. That is a fuel/payload ratio of about 15 to 1. To accelerate the Shuttle to escape velocity it would take another 3 million pounds of fuel, but it would take 45 million pounds of fuel to lift that 3 million pound to LEO. In other words, it would 15 SHUTTLE BOOSTER launches to get that escape fuel into orbit (assuming you lifted only the escape fuel and did not use the Shuttle ). Different design and fuel arrangements can reduce the fuel requirements a little, but this gives you an idea of why it took such a huge rocket to go to the moon. The Apollo Saturn 5 was the most powerful machine ever built. During launch, the Saturn 5 generated as much power per second as all the powerplants in America at that time! If you are planning a return trip, then you must also lift to Earth LEO and Earth escape velocity: 1) fuel for deceleration to orbit around the other world, 2) fuel to decelerate to the surface of the other world, 3) fuel to lift from the other world to low orbit, 4) fuel for escape velocity from the other world for the transit ferry , 5) fuel for deceleration upon return to Earth, either in one stage or two, that is to LEO and then to Earth. If you do it in two stages you can lift the landing fuel and vehicle to LEO without carrying it all the way to Mars, i.e., use the shuttle or a Russian lander to bring the Martianauts home from Earth orbit. Either way the return vehicle is going to be going 30,000 to 60,000 mph when it reaches Earth after falling 30-40 million miles into the solar gravity well. In other words, it is going to take more fuel per unit vehicle mass to slow the vehicle back down to Earth orbit velocity than it did to to escape from Earth going out! 6) and maneuvering fuel going and coming. That is why some are proposing to manufacture the return fuel on the Moon or Mars, so you don't have to lift the off-world return fuel all the way from Earth to Mars and then back. Of course it would take huge amounts of fuel to get the manufacturing equipment to Mars or the Moon to begin with. You can use modules and reduce the amount of fuel for each step: small Mars lander, small return vehicle to Mars low orbit, but I'll bet the Earth-Mars transit ferry will have to be at least 200,000 pounds. You can't expect the astronauts to sit in a telephone booth for four to six months. There are other design proposals to reduce the amount of fuel needed: ion drives, solar sails, aero-braking for Mars, etc., but IT IS GOING TO TAKE A SATURN 5-CLASS PROPULSION SYSTEM PARKED IN EARTH LOW ORBIT TO GET THE CREW TO MARS AND BACK. You save a lot of fuel with a nuke powered Earth-Mars transit vehicle, but it is no magic bullet. Nuke engines are heavy and only double the specific impulse over the the Shuttle LHLO. The limiting factor is the temperature tolerance of your propulsion system materials, not the energy contained in a fission reaction. It is still going to take huge amounts of fuel. But then, I'm no rocket scientist. Do I think the U.S. ought to do it. Dern right!

What?!?

I'm sorry - could you show me *any* 1000 man corporation that burned through a trillion dollars over ten years?

As for your 5 man figure - again, *what*? Let's say those five guys earn an average of $100,000. Benefits usually add 50% to the total so that's $150,000 each, a total of $750,000 for five men, not two million. Even if we assume another $50,000 per man-year for hardware, rent and so on we still haven't reached 50% of your figure.