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Actual Costs for the Space Station
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."
develop new type of nuclear warhead ... ... ...
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
But $40 million is nothing. The possibilities of space exploration, research, null gravity mechanics and engineering are limited only by our imaginations.
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
sending people to space is cool and all, but why not use the resources to find a cure for cancer or aids or do something for the homeless?
yeah, i know thats not the way government works
cheers
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.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
Let's face it... The money would have gone to the military. If you are thinking education, poverty, medicare, you are dreaming.
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.
Tournament Management Online &
Huh? The US national debt is at $6.3Trillion dollars. $40Billion wouldn't do squat.
Michael Loves Me!
Why dont' people count how many space stations one could build at a cost of, for example, the most recent tax cut ? 10 ? 20 ? .. hell, I'd send back my $300 refund to have a few bigger space stations and an outpost on Mars. Would you ?
Every single scientist I know, hates the ISS. It robs money from much more valuable science.
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.
I realize that the space station *could* provide a great resourse for doing scietific experiments for the entire world. But, with the current budget situation and the chances of it being mothballed, I seriously think we could have spent that money in a much better way. I can't imagne that a manned mission to Mars would have cost much more than 40 BILLION, if it would even have been that much. Then at least we would have had something to show for the money. Honestly, I would be better pleased to have seen us allocated a large part of that 40 billion to building some more probes to get information on planets and moons of our solar system. Heck, even exploring the moon more in depth, and looking into lunar mining wouldn't have cost this much. Of course, since we now have George Jr. to contend with we all might as well just continue reading our SciFi books for the next few years.
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 @$$.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
Big deal. Things cost money. It's estimated that building new WTC towers will be about $12 billion. And that's on Earth! We are talking about a Space Station ("That's no moon...That's a space station!" ), not some shed out in someone's backyard. It's not like you can just rent a truck from Home Depot to deliver the supplies you need. Not to mention that astronauts have a little bit more training, and are higher paid than carpenters.
But on the other hand, we probably don't have to worry about terrorists flying airplanes into it.
I don't have a sig...Do you??
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.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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.
I do reseaech on tissue engineering. There is very little benefit to growing tissues in zero gravity. To keep it from getting flattened out all you need is some sort of 3D matrix for the tissue to grow in.
The astronaut was talking out of his ass.
The cost/benefit ratio for biomedical research in space is horrible. Don't kid yourself.
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.
Yet Another Web Site
Of course you don't take into account the myriads of scientific and technical discoveries that have come from the space program.
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.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
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.
$40 billion is a lot for one person, chump change for a nation.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Thats kind of like saying: "WalMart is a huge company, my taking [stealing] this tiny whatever is nothing to them." It all adds up--just need to find several more $40M projects to cancel...
Where do you think that $40 billion went? Did it just disappear? Nope. It went back into our economy. It's just $40 billion we spent on ourselves. Granted, I'd rather have a tax break and spend it myself, but it's not like we destroyed $40 billion.
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 goes.
You are misusing the term "begging the question". It means to use circular reasoning. You mean, "raises the question".
There are no trolls. There are no trees out here.
Someday I may tell you how 13 men took on an Empire, and altared history (for the better), forever, 2000 years ago.
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.
rather than throwing money at problems and overengineering them
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.
Cost accounting is one of the most misused tools...
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.
The defense budget for next year is slated to be $343.2 billion. That's for 1 year. As is quoted so often, that is way more than the total spent by the next 10 or more highest spending countries COMBINED.
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...
A very large portion of this expense was caused by congress dithering over the budget, and NASA doing a very poor job of handling congress.
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.
plus-good, double-plus-good
Besides, the money is going to a good place. I'd rather see my tax dollars go to science and engineering regardless of the outcome. It's not like $40B has been launched into space, never to return. It went back into the economy where it belongs.
First, its $40B.
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.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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?
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
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 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.
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?)
I pay taxes, don't I? But yes, if this war was being funded directly out of citizen's pockets, instead of through taxation, I'd consider my $1,000 well-invested.
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!
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
That was my first guess but, he said for the better, which discounts that one.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Well, we talk about "Costs" as if someone took
$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.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
$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.
I always get the shakes before a drop.
actually the Japanese bombed pearl harbor, not the germans. I assume you mistyped.
You oversimplify. $40 Billion in pieces of paper does not cause _anything_ to happen. Think of money as a placeholder for purchase of products or services. Yes, that money kept people at NASA employed and tricked down to all sorts of other businesses. Had that money not been spent on NASA, but on some other government program it would have also benefitied many people, directly or indirectly.
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.
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.