Debunking the Trillion-Dollar Space Myth 590
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? (Score:5, Funny)
Next thing you know, you'll be telling me that someone on slashdot did the same thing!
Article Text (Page 3) Plain old text (Score:3, Informative)
On January 14 President Bush announced his space plan at NASA Headquarters and indicated that he was advocating spending a total of $12 billion over five years on the plan, only $1 billion of it additional money. Many newspaper articles reported that this was not a lot of money, and in fact would come primarily from within NASA's existing budget. But despite this new information, some reporters refused to abandon the $1 trillion number, while at the same time failing to check its origin
Re:why human? (Score:3, Insightful)
Get votes.
I doubt that there will be any follow through on the Mars shot. It was not even mentioned six days later in the state of the union address. It has not been mentioned since. The press corps were uniformly skeptical, as are the public.
Not long after they knifed Hubble. The fact that the Christian fundies were complaining about spending money on questioning creation is probably pure coincidence.
I think that regardless of
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Russians are the best bet, since China is not known for design innovations; their Shenzou spacecraft is an enlarged Soyuz! And Indians have yet to launch a man to orbit, though they are currently in a race with China to reach the moon.
Of course, due to politics it would be impossible for NASA to outsource to Russia (thanks to Ir
I will place my minions on the moon (Score:2, Funny)
I'm just curious (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'm just curious (Score:5, Informative)
I used to do oversight work on contractors that did gov't jobs.
The lowest bidder (usually) got the contract, but then, whatever they could charge Uncle Sam with a straight face (unforeseen delays, cost overruns, etc) the US paid without comment.
So a typical job of 250,000$, 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.
Re:I'm just curious (Score:3, Insightful)
so, $1 Trillion over ~30 years means they're guessing it will take the world somewhere more than 300,000 people working on this project a year for
gov't, consultant and contractor waste? (Score:4, Funny)
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:
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.
the original Moon project gave back to us (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:the original Moon project gave back to us (Score:3, Insightful)
The benefits from things like a mars mission or base on the moon won't be instant, but it's a wise investment.
Yes, but consider the costs of computers. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Computers save you money, when used correctly (Score:3, Insightful)
Firstly, it doesn't take 25 minutes to type each and every letter. You boot the computer once, and can generally type hundreds of letters. For most companies, form letters are the rule. Instead of typing an entire letter, you can just put in the customer's name and address (takes about 30 seconds if you're slow), and off you go. But wait! With computers, we have these funky things called databases, and you can do a merge of your database info
Re:I'm just curious (Score:3, Insightful)
This guy should post on Slashdot. (Score:5, Funny)
The goverment pays extra for waste... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The goverment pays extra for waste... (Score:2, Funny)
That's nothing, I've gotten married, and believe me, those few screws were hardly worth the $500K its cost me over the past 20 years.
Re:The goverment pays extra for waste... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The goverment pays extra for waste... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or for one more example, during the Desert Storm flavor of Iraq wars someone thought they would save money getting fax machines from an office supply company rather than the expensive Mil-Spec ones. They had a half life of some fraction of a day (heat, sand, grit, noise adn vibration of F18 takeoffs).
There is waste fuele
Re:The goverment pays extra for waste... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Really people, think it through.
- sm
$1 trillion can go very quickly... (Score:4, Insightful)
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... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$1 trillion can go very quickly... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:$1 trillion can go very quickly... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:$1 trillion can go very quickly... (Score:4, Funny)
Is this supprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:4, Interesting)
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? (Score:4, Insightful)
Reporter Michael Bolton was heard to say: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Reporter Michael Bolton was heard to say: (Score:3, Funny)
Sad (Score:2)
Reporting is supposed to give facts, not 'plausible assumptions'.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The trillion dollar figure won't die (Score:3, Informative)
No, NASA can handle it just fine themselves (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Control? (Score:2)
Shocker: space industry reclassifies its own costs (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the reality though - ISS, Shuttle etc. Name one of these programs that has not overrun its budget by a substantial margin.
Bush Senior vs. Bush Junior (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll do it for half that! (Score:5, Funny)
BTM
Wow. That's a lot of $1s (Score:2)
Myths and Lies (Score:4, Funny)
Actual Cost Breakdown (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Plan never had a chance (Score:5, Insightful)
(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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Still high. What's needed is a real plan (Score:3, Informative)
I suggest everyone check out Mars Direct [nw.net]. It's a plan estimated by its creator to cost around $20bn to start up and $2bn per mission. Even NASA's version is only $60bn when they ran their numbers.
One last thing. The 90-day report figure of $400 bn back in the early ninties was based on the Werner Von-Bruan plan of M
Re:Still high. What's needed is a real plan (Score:3, Informative)
Mars Direct is so cheap for several reasons;
Virtually every page is f
Solution (Score:4, Funny)
Whether or not he arrives in one piece, however, was a minor omission in the requirements document, much to his later dismay.
$1 trillion (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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:
Yeah, and so are lots of things. Doesn't mean we should spend government money on it.
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.
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.)
Re:So suppose it's only $100b (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17011
Excerpt:
"Looking into the future, we need to ask, what scientific work can be done by astronauts on Mars? They can walk around and look at the terrain, and carry out tests on rocks, looking for signs of water or life, but all that can be done by robots. They can bring back rock samples, as the Apollo astronauts did from the moon, but that too can be done by robots. Samples of rocks from the moon wer
Make It Profitable And It Will Fly (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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) (Score:5, Interesting)
According to this site
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/space
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? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
Size of the challenge (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:sounds cheap compared to... (Score:3, Insightful)
nice idea (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:nice idea (Score:3, Interesting)
True, but there is still a huge difference between "wanting to kill each other" and "wanting to make the whole Earth uninhabitable". The people in Northern Ireland, Middle East or Africa might indeed want to kill their neighbors (and sadly often do), but they still don't want to have the Armageddon. So "making the world a better place" in this case boils do
Re:nice idea (Score:4, Insightful)
You should revisit 'Lord of the Flies'.
Re:sounds cheap compared to... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:4, Funny)
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... (Score:3, Informative)
The point is you don't need any nukes if you get the warning in time. See this extensive article at FAS: http://www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/usaf/2020/
Re:sounds cheap compared to... (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Colonize the Oceans! (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with you that spending money on space for the "purpose" of colonization and lebensraum is useless. However I think there is somewhere we could expand human living space: under the oceans. We have hundreds of thousands of hectares of submerged, convenient continental shelf floor waiting for exploration and colonization.
I find it absurd that we have spent so much mapping
Re:sounds cheap compared to... (Score:5, Funny)
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... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:sounds cheap compared to... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:sounds cheap compared to... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, what did you expect? The environmentalist movement, and their willing thralls in the media, have been propagandizing for decades that the Earth is little more t
Re:sounds cheap compared to... (Score:3, Funny)
They're coming to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids...that's what Red asteroids do.
Never mind. (Score:2)
Re:Is not a trillion, what is it? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is not a trillion, what is it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Teflon and chips came from the Manhattan project (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is not a trillion, what is it? (Score:3, Informative)
A number of much more reasonable plans were put forth by people other than NASA, but not in time to make a difference. It would seem that these early super-inflated prices are still going to hold us back.
Re:Is not a trillion, what is it? (Score:3, Informative)
Beyond that, the original $500B proposal was probably over-estimated, because everyone in NASA (along with private contractors) tried to get their pet projects added to the mix. So you end up with things like nuclear-powered ships that aren't strictly necessary.
Obligatory Slashdot-Mars-story link: The Case for Mars [nw.net], by Robert Zubrin.
Re:Is not a trillion, what is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Not even close (Score:3, Interesting)
according to the navy, a bare-bones aircraft carrier costs $4.5 Billion-- and you think you can build the craft that will go to Mars for $10 Billion????
Re:Not even close (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One big problem (Score:3, Insightful)
That was point #2 of my plan. Read much?
I know that was #2 of yoru plan. You said your plan is based on technology we have today. Where is it? Where are these nuclear powered space planes?
Pegasus launch solution. It shows that the concept is highly workable.
"highly workable" is a long way from "developed and proven."
Nuclear Thermal Rockets are 40 year old, well understood beasts.
And hydrogen fuel cells are a 100 year old technology. Why am I s
Re: Is not a trillion, what is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously the writer of this comment did not bother to read the actual article, only the Slashdot readers' meta-comments.
The article states that the original, mistaken, media estimate of $1T was based on just such an assumption, only taking the 1989 proposal, not the Apollo program, as baseline. The large estimate came from a misunderstanding of what was included in the 1989 plan/budget. In fact, because several of the prospecting missions and technological developments that the 198
Re:Fuck it (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Poverty (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:why am i forced to pay for useless exploration? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
What?!? (Score:3, Informative)
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.