Actual Costs for the Space Station 780
Cujo writes "This article in space.com discusses what the actual costs of the space station have been since it was first proposed by President Reagan in 1984. Depending on how you account for the cost of shuttle launches, the number is well over $40 billion in the U.S. alone. It begs the question of what else could have been done with the same money and far superior management."
you could ... (Score:2, Insightful)
wage war on iraq
extend your efforts in war on terrorism
etc etc. I'd rather pour money into this *dead end* project then sponsor arms race.
2c
p
I'm sorry... (Score:0, Insightful)
If someone told you a government project in the works for almost 20 years had cost us $40 million would your initial reaction be that this was a large amount of money or a great deal?
Considering the staggering number of scientific discoveries that await us outside of Earth's atmosphere, you could tell me this was a $40 million a year project and I wouldn't blink.
I think the bulk of the people bitching about this price tag lack vision and spend too much of their lives living today without giving any thought to living tomorrow.
Craenor
Waste of money (Score:0, Insightful)
yeah, i know thats not the way government works
cheers
NASA has to leave earth orbit! (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope NASA will stop wasting money in earth orbit getting no research done with expensive meatbots. They should save the big bucks and human beings for the real deals, the Moon, Mars and beyond!
NASA claims that the ISS is paving the way for long-term space flight but Mir had already done that. Paying to help the Russians to keep Mir going would have been much cheaper but was not politically acceptable which is a real shame.
Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, for this $40B US there was probably some re-investment back into hi-tech, science, research grants, and areospace.
I don't think its been wasted, its just hard to gauge the return on investment.
Re:National debt. (Score:2, Insightful)
Begs the Question vs Raises the Question (Score:1, Insightful)
expense (Score:5, Insightful)
Pork Politics (Score:1, Insightful)
So why do we have it? Because NASA is very sly about making sure they have contractors in all of the important congressional districts.
As a side note, I would estimate that most scientists and engineers would agree that a much quicker and surer road to the permanent presence of humans in space would be to scrap *all* of NASA's current manned space flight programs and invest that money in research on the next generation launch technologies, instead of throwing it down the toilet with horse and pony shows like the ISS.
Mars anyone?? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't wait for China's space program! (Score:5, Insightful)
I sure hope China gets their Taikonauts up in space soon! If they put a space station up and start heading for the Moon, it should light a fire under NASA's @$$.
Yeah, Whatever (Score:3, Insightful)
But on the other hand, we probably don't have to worry about terrorists flying airplanes into it.
Re:Holy fuck that's a lot of money. (Score:3, Insightful)
The real question that should be asked is 'is the space station justified at all', not merely whether it could be done slightly cheaper. The project would still be overpriced at $5 billion.
Consider that the SSC would have provided far more science for $10 billion. Or for that matter consider how much science we could get by sending up a duplicate of Hubble - many of the parts exist already as test pieces for the orbitting Hubble, the test mirror made by Kodak was actually done right.
Or consider what a boost to the economy we could get by giving the same money to rich corporate campaign contributors. $40 billion is more than the retrospective tax handouts that Bush wanted to give Enron.
Or even (gasp) think what could be done if the same amount had gone into other research areas such as biotech or the Internet. There is a reason the Web was born at CERN, they had the resources to do that type of work.
The economist had a good article recently where they speculat that NASA asked Nixon for funding for a mars mission and got rejected, so they split the mission into three parts, first a reusable space shuttle, then a space station, finally a mars mission.
Since then the obvious conclusion to draw from the success of the unmanned missions is that they are cheaper and result in more science.
Not too much money, really (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire U.S. space program in the 1960's and 1970's cost roughly the same amount of money that U.S. consumers spent on cosmetics in the same period of time. The real cost of the space programs, even counting wasted money (it is still a lot of experimentation) is pretty low, depending on what you compare it to.
And what they're doing, at least to me, is pretty important.
Re:you could ... (Score:0, Insightful)
I'd rather pour money into this *dead end* project then sponsor arms race.
Yeah, god forbid we spend money on preserving freedom, liberty and yes, capitalism, which gives us the ability to do space exploration.
I can easily make the argument that the money spent on defense is orders of magnitude more valuable than money spent ANYWHERE else.
Re:Is $40 billion really that much? (Score:3, Insightful)
It was all fake "internet" money, usually involving worthless shares!
load of crap (Score:1, Insightful)
The astronaut was talking out of his ass.
The cost/benefit ratio for biomedical research in space is horrible. Don't kid yourself.
Re:Is $40 billion really that much? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is more likely:
- A numnber of very intelligent people from a variety of countries have teamed up to build a big waste of money.
- A number of very intelligent people from a variety of countries have teamed up to do something that you don't have all the details on.
Re:Conflicted (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, space stations have always been the "safe" fallback position for manned space flight. When it was clear the Russians lost the moon race, they shifted their program to space stations. Instead of more moon exploration or a manned Mars mission the U.S.A. did the same.
When nobody has the balls to propose anything bold for manned spaceflight, we end up with a space station of somewhat limited utility. It would be cool if we had a space station that served as an assembly and launching point for manned expoloration, but that's not what we have in the ISS.
Re:Waste of money (Score:3, Insightful)
Many of them apply directly to medicine or something for the homeless. We get more out of the space program than nifty pictures of earth from way up high.
Whether we got 40 billion worth is debatable.
--
BTW, you cant write a 40 Billion dollar check to someone and jot down 'for curing AIDS' or 'to end homelessness' in the memo section. It doesnt work like that.
Space Station vs Going to Mars/Moon/Whatever (Score:5, Insightful)
Why, you ask? Because it costs too much to launch from Earth every time (And a colony WILL require a lot of launches at first). Ideally, what we want is a dry dock in space where we can build any space craft. Simply send materials up and have them built in space. Then launch the completed ship from there.
Furthermore, a orbital habitat would give us a place to become acclimated to the environment of space.
The ultimate plan should be to build a space station, and put people up there in a more permanent manner in order to get some people acclimated. After a simple space station is completed, a dry dock should be built. From that dry dock, a ship should be built. That ship would be sent to the Moon, where a colony and a similar space station/dry dock would be built. Once we have a staging point around the Moon, then we would be able to colonize Mars.
I really don't care about putting people on Mars for a few days and then having them come back. Anything they could do on a two day mission, a probe can probably do the same thing. The only reason I want a person on Mars is to start a colony and a LOT of preparation must be made in order to feasibly do that.
better management :-) (Score:4, Insightful)
Human beings are not able to manage big projects. (This is true everwhere, in every country, both in private and public sectors, etc...).
So the initial hypothesis ("if better managed") is simply false.
Re:Mars anyone?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Holy fuck that's a lot of money. (Score:4, Insightful)
$40 billion is a lot for one person, chump change for a nation.
Re:Nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm. It was.
Re:National debt. (Score:2, Insightful)
$40 billion into OUR economy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Conflicted (Score:2, Insightful)
Short answer: Yes
Long answer- space exploration has produced or driven the techonolgy behind everything from cell phones to Tang. The fact that you use the systems you do, much of the technology that is available to you and your children (if any), and any number of other improvements in the quality of our lives can be traced back to the need to develop new technologies for exploring space.
As I've said elsewhere, being unable to see the benefits of something yourself does not mean there are not any, and those benefits are not always quantifiable or what you would expect.
Cool is fine, but frankly we need to explore space for the most prosaic reason I can posit- this planet won't last forever; our eggs are all in one cosmic basket. One decent-sized asteroid and everything from the Gutenberg Bible to molecular porn [slashdot.org] goes.
Re:NASA has to leave earth orbit! (Score:3, Insightful)
The only problem here is mismanagement and political infighting, which alone caused the bloated wasteful expenses the ISS project has incurred.
Re:you could ... (Score:2, Insightful)
"begs the question" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:NASA has to leave earth orbit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:NASA has to leave earth orbit! (Score:2, Insightful)
What am I talking about? Think back to the hay days of NASA, when it made it possible for all us Slashdotters to even exist by championing the IC and making computers to handle those early spaceships. The amount of money brought back to the American Gov't in form of taxes through the econmic technology booms that followed more than paid for the investment on sending some guys up to the moon to walk around and thumb our noses at the Russians.
The problem today is that NASA and the Congress is so concerned about cost cutting than just going for it. We need to get off this Rock in a big way and the results may be worth it. But just dinking around in a restricted space station without doing things we havn't done before will produce nothing.
Until NASA finds a destination and the American Public's imagination is stirred once more to support it, the Space Station is just a big waste of money.
I fear the only thing that will ever get us off this rock is finding some really frightening reason to do it, like alien contact or an actual asteroid actually on target to hit us. Neither of which are too likely. Maybe Star Trek could talk about all the economic benefits we saw from NASA in the 60's (Microwave ovens, computer pressurized ball point pens etc.) What would life be life without having gone to the moon?
Re:you could ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:NASA should benchmark other organizations, (Score:1, Insightful)
Please, don't bother. I have enough kooks pestering me about religion these days.
They "altared" history, did they? Pun intended, I presume? Personally, I don't think it was for the better.
Re:NASA should benchmark other organizations, (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because it's so damn easy. Which is why, what, less than a dozen countries in the world have Earth to space launch capabilites right now.
Of course, we'll also ignore that NASA happened to pioneer a lot of the technology that all but one of those other countries now use...
If NASA has the attitude that having a space station that was 99% safe, instead of 99.99% safe
Then we'd have nothing at all in space. Let's do the math... if you have a system that is made up of 100 parts and is 99% safe then, on average, one part will malfunction every use. If you take that same system and it's 99.99% safe then you have one part malfunction every 100 uses. And since orbital systems are considerably more than 100 parts, you can pretty much guarantee that there's going to be a problem everytime, even at 99.999% reliability. The idea is to make it so that when that problem does occur it doesn't become fatal.
Has NASA made some mistakes? Hell yeah... the bureacracy is absurd, the NIH syndrome is rampant, and the reluctance to try new technologies is systemic. That said, most space buffs also tend to ignore the quibbling little issues that make NASA not pursue a lot of avenues... whether those issues are political, sociological, financial, or technical.
Any history buff can tell you just how far a few, determined, idealistic men can go in changing history
Mayhaps you should go looking into the X-Prize, which has this as its aim. I sincerely hope that one of the teams succeeds, since it would dramatically revolutionize the space game. I worry, however, that the teams with the most likelyhood of succeeding will be hamstrung by bureacrats that are too worried about turf and are, indeed, wiffles.
and altared history
Interesting typo there.. but I'll leave the troll bait alone.
Actual costs are where you find them (Score:5, Insightful)
40 billion over 19 years is something like two billion a year. Chicken feed.
The management at NASA is one of the finest and most frugal in the world. They have performed freaking miracles on a shoestring budget.
We spend hundreds of billions a year on armed forces with no real enemy in sight. The "war on terror" is a police action, requiring police resources. Any misuse of it, such as conquering oil fields, has nothing to do with defense.
How much have we spent on our military in the last 19 years? Trillions. That's thousands of billions.
How much have we spent financing the debt we ran up proving supply side economics works (for wealthy people)? We spend 17 percent of every federal tax dollar we pay, each year, to finance that debt. That's HUNDREDS of billions of dollars a YEAR paid to the holders of our debt.
How much have we spent in 19 years to finance the supply side miracle? Let's assume 200 billion a year.
200,000,000,000 x 19 = 3,800,000,000,000. Three trillion, eight hundred billion freaking dollars over nineteen years, to the biggest money redistribution government program in history. Where the hell is all this mew wealth coming from? 3.8 trillion in reinvested wealth in the hands of millions of rich people.
And now, since it's "war" time, we are back to deficit spending, raising the debt limit to 6.5 trillion to finance tax cuts for the same wealthy people getting the debt welfare from the previous accumulated debt.
THAT is where we are bleeding to dead. We are paying enormous treasure out to the wealthy to finance tax cuts for the same wealthy.
And two billion a year is a problem? JEEEZUS.
The space station, like everything else in the space program, was starved to death not only on yearly funding, but on the funding of something to actually DO with the damned thing. You can't get anything done with a damned basically military-run tin can complex that isn't part of a greater purpose. It's doomed. Mars? Forget it, no money, we're spending it on debt financing and military conquest of oil fields.
In my opinion as the oldest and most avid space nut I know, the space station was a waste of time, along with the superspaceplane. A transport vehicle to a station which does nothing, except keep Lockheed Martin in contracts.
Mars would have been even worse. It's the Apollo syndrome all over again: exploration for "science" alone is worthless. You have to send people, civilians and private contrators, up on cheap reusable vehicles to do real things.
Like what? Setting up the who Gerry O'Neill/Princeton space industrialization project, to enable USE of it all. Metals, powersats, colonies, all self-supporting after a long time of expensive investment. It would give us a huge frontier with no moral qualms about killing people already living there, and ultimately enable powersats that would save our collective asses in the century to come.
But we have no collective imagination to do such things. It's too outre. So NASA limps along with one leg and '70's castoff furniture in rusting buildings to save money while we borrow money for other things, like tax cuts for rich people and the future pacification of the world in our interests by military and other means.
Ad astra, someday. not today.
40 billion over 18 years? that's nothing... (Score:1, Insightful)
I wonder what we could do with half of that money, and far superior management?
Oh...that's right...we could build 3 or 4 more space stations...next year...
Congress caused a lot of it. (Score:2, Insightful)
When the project started, EVERY year, congress would budget it out and say "you get X small amount this year, you will get Y larger amount next year and following years". Then next year they would revise the Y amount down, and direct NASA to redesign so as to reduce the over all cost.
NASA spent BILLIONS on redesigns, and wasted BILLIONS because Y budget wasn't there to take advantage (or even maintain) things they built and/or started using the X budget.
Congress created a plan, then revised it every year through the entire project. NASA believed everything congress told them, and planned on congress sticking to it's promisses.
This did not work out well.
Re:Holy fuck that's a lot of money. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:National debt. (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, a good chunk of that money trickles down into peoples pockets. Everyone from the scientists and engineers down to the girl in the NASA cafeteria.
It's all fine and good to talk about the government cancelling everything the government spends money on, firing everyone non-essential, then we can have a nice balanced budget on paper, and we can pay down the debt. Won't that feel great?
Except noone will have a job, and there would be absolutely no government aid for our new impoverished nation.
There are countries that do exactly what you'd like. They're all in the third world.
A good chunk of the population works for the government, directly or indirectly. If this 40B accomplished nothing else, it at least puts people to work.
Re:not quite (Score:3, Insightful)
Guestimating that there are about 200 million taxpayers, doesn't that mean each one of them pays $1,000 apeace to wage war on Iraq? I wonder how many of the blowhard chicken hawks would be willing to write a check of their own money for $1,000 in advance to back their warmongering bravado?
Re:NASA should benchmark other organizations, (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is they didn't have to shut down the program for 2 years after the Challenger accident. The root cause of the problem was identified in a matter of weeks. They could have continued operations within months of the accident by implementing minimum temperature limits at the launch site. Yes, there would be increased risk but I would have been willing to take it and I'm sure most of the astornaunts would be as well.
Hell, they should have had a new booster design in operation in less than a year (Thiokol already had a list of 43 possible improvements [utexas.edu] to the O-ring design 6 months before the accident) . Most of those 2 years were wasted trying to pin the blame on someone, not trying to improve the safety of the shuttle. And don't even get me started on the fact that the boosters were segmented in the first place because of a "lets spread the wealth around" political decision to build the bloody things halfway across the county.
Wated money? Not all of it... (Score:3, Insightful)
The main problem is we're lacking the stiff competition that the Russians used to provide to us, so we're just moping along at our own pace. We're not worried about some damn communists beating us into space anymore. NASA should create a rogue nation for the explicit purpose of competiting with us to get to Mars. We'd get there lickity split! (Hell, GM did it to themselves by creating Saturn, why can't NASA?)
Re:not quite (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, how many tax-funded services would you be willing to pay for directly? How many of these services would you be willing to opt out of, if your budget didn't allow for regular payments? How many of these services is it possible to opt out of--can you not use the highway system if you don't like how much it costs, or if you can't afford it this month?
And according to the "pay or opt out" approach, how should we handle this war with Iraq? If you don't pay, should we exile you to a parallel universe where Saddam is free to nuke or poison every neighbor he can get his hands on? Where Iraq becomes the resort location for terrorist training camps? Or, since that's not possible, should we simply put up with your lifelong complaint that it was a waste of your tax dollars?
Tell you what: let's vote on it. You vote for voluntary subscriptions to community services (instead of mandatory taxes), and I'll vote for whatever policies I think best serve my country, my community, and myself. See you at the polls!
Re:you could ... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, make the argument.
Alright, today the US military is disbanded. Boom, gone. How long do think it would take for the US to invaded?
Then, how long do you think it would take Europe to fall part into another world war?
The problem with having the western world at peace for so (relatively) long is that we have two generations who have absolutely no clue WHY the western world has remained at (relative) peace.
Re:NASA should benchmark other organizations, (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Actual costs are where you find them (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you were there, you didn't see the Gulf War. You saw what someone else wanted you to see. That someone else may have been a military censor, may have been a CNN camera crew, may have been the BBC, may have been Al-Jazeers for all I know--but you didn't see the Gulf War.
It was a bloodless war because of superior leadership.
One, it wasn't a bloodless war. Find out how many Iraqis died sometime.
Two, it was a one-sided war because Hussein was stupid enough to give us a couple of months to build up our forces. At the time he invaded Kuwait, we had fewer than 5,000 troops in Saudi. The Republican Guard wouldn't have even noticed that few troops--it wouldn't even have been a speedbump on the road to Riyadh.
In the space of just a few months, though, we had aircraft carriers--each with more naval power than existed in all of World War Two--in the Gulf, we had E-3s airborne over Prince Sultan and Riyadh, we had EW craft jamming Iraqi radars, and we'd dropped tens of thousands of tons of bombs on Iraq. Not smart bombs, either--only 3% of all bombs in the Gulf War were precision-guided.
We were able to get all that materiel to the Gulf in the space of a handful of months precisely because we'd invested a hell of a lot of money in (a) materials and (b) logistics. To suggest that those two can be entirely done away with just by getting "good generals" is to commit the ultimate armchair general's mistake.
Amateurs talk about strategy and tactics.
Professionals talk about materiel and logistics.
You can't have supplies, or the means to transport supplies quickly and effectively, if you aren't willing to invest in them.
Re:Actual costs are where you find them (Score:2, Insightful)
First, I don't know where this number of $19 million dollars came from, the BEA [bea.gov] says that we spent $204.5 billion from 1982-2001 on space.
How much did the government spend on national defense from 1982-2001? $5.773 trillion [doc.gov].
How much did the government spend on interest payments from 1982-2001? $4.09 trillion
How much did the government spend on "income securities" (welfare, diability, etc.) from 1982-2001? $9 trillion.
We have been continuously been in deficit spending since 1979 [neothought.net].
The government now spends more per capita per year than what per capita yearly income was in 1978 [neothought.net].
In the year 2000, expenditures on national defense was 11.6% of total expenditures, which was $2.77 trillion [neothought.net] Income securites was 23.2%.
Currently the effective tax rate (the average per capita tax) is about 33% [neothought.net]. In 1913 it was 5%.
Median income for a 4-person family in 2000 was $62,228 [census.gov]. In 1982 it was $27,619.
The debt is bad, but the tax burden is the problem. The way to get rid of the debt is to curb spending, but military spending only accounts for about 11%, and let the economy grow out of the debt. Per capita income has been skyrocketting, but so have expenditures and consequently taxes. But you can't blame military spending. Someone has fed you bull and you ate it. I can tell when someone has never taken an economics class, or been in the military.
By the way, if you pay income tax, you are by definition "rich", since the top 50% of wage earners pay 96% of the income tax. Futhermore, ANY reduction in income taxes now by rule will disportionately affect the rich since the rich so disportionately carry the burden.
Re:Actual costs are where you find them (Score:1, Insightful)
I think it's entirely justifiable to expect the person with the higher income to pay a higher percentage of his/her income than the working class person. 15 mil after 50% in taxes is quite a bit more than 20K after 33% in taxes.
Costs Shmosts (Score:3, Insightful)
$100 billion dollars, put it in a shuttle, and launched it into orbit.
That's NOT what happened to the money.
It paid for r&d infrastucture, it paid for development of materials and processes, and it paid salaries. It also paid for raw materials, and, yes, it probably built more than a couple of summer houses for a few politicians.
We talk about the "Costs" of the program apparently without realizing that we PAID ourselves. Jobs were created, University programs were funded, and the only real problem here is that the "taxpayers" are now unhappy about it and wishing they could have it to do over again and spend that money on something else.
Re:NASA has to leave earth orbit! (Score:1, Insightful)
-Mishra
Negligible. (Score:2, Insightful)
$4e10/(200e6 avg. # taxpayers)/(19 years)/(365 days a year) ~= $0.03 per taxpayer per day.
The entire Apollo moon program was carried out for a nickle a day per US citizen.
Re:National debt. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:National debt. (Score:3, Insightful)
Had that money not been collected by the government in taxes, it would have been spent by citizens and benefited people all over the country. The notion (though commonly held) that large amounts of money spent by government, no matter how pointless the expenditure, somehow becomes valuable by a trickle down process, could be used to justify all sorts of nonsensical projects.
By your reasoning, the government should take all of our paychecks, build a skyscraper 100 miles high, and while they're at it 100 miles deep. It will keep many people employed for years. Of course their paychecks will have to be confiscated to support the project too. Hopefully some funds somewhere will be left over for farmers to grow food for all of us working on "The Project".
And hopefully, people will get it through their heads that money spent on useless projects does not take _money_ away from other efforts, but does take _manpower_ away from other efforts. Where we focus our attention _does_ make a difference, money is just a placeholder.
As far as the space program goes, I think parts of it are quite usefull. Manned programs are more showmanship than research though. More research could be done by unmanned vehicles for far fewer dollars, which means that either more roads could be built, or more unmanned satelites could be launched, or I'd have more money to spend at Starbucks. It's all about priorities.
Re:you could ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Pretty long! Who would do it, and why? All U.S. neighbors are too economically entwined to really want to rock the boat, and besides, the U.S. has 300 000 000 people. The most obvious threat would be China, but exactly what would they get out of it?
Sure the U.S. has enemies that would consider attacking out of sheer hate, but they are
- too small
- too far away
- too poor
and besides, the US military doesn't do much to stop those enemies - if anything they're egged on by its existence.Think before the next time you ask a rhetorical question!
Duh..... Decimate!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Whereas the US doesn't want to be part of any international organisation that it can not dominate, many other western countries have no objection. This is why the EU works. Hell, there are some major rows there, but it is better that they take place in Brussels/Strasbourg than the Somme.
The orginal principle of NATO is all for one meaning that no country needs to be able to defend itself because it's partners will help. This significantly reduces military spending and allows money to be blown on other more useful things than killing people.
Re:you could ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine if Saddam had been beat down in the 1980s not the 1990s. Imagine if the quote-unquote "global cop" had intervened in Cambodia, Rwanda, North Korea, Zimbabwe or any of the many other worthy places where the US's cheap raw materials or own security wasn't directly at risk.
I'm not saying that the US obliged to sort out other people's problems that they did not cause, but let's not be under illusions about it being a case of 'sometimes the right thing needs to be done'.