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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."
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???
is that the actual amount spent on it or is that including inflation? I am not sure what the rate of inflation has been since 1984 but I am guessing that it would be moderatly higher. Also you have to take into account that the technology back then was far more expensive than it is today so that can also drasticly add to the costs of the project.
"The two most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -Harlan Ellison
1. Tell Congress to give us the money and stay the fuck away until it's time for us to ask for more money.
2. Put two Soyuz capsules up there so two people can do science while another three do maintenance. A sixth person can be any random rich person paying oodles of cash for the opportunity to scrub toilets IN SPAAAAAAAACE.
3. Let the Russians handle station operations. If that's disagreeable then hire as many Russians away from Russia as needed. They know how to handle space stations, we don't.
[o]_O
organizations that capitalize on the intellectual assets and fervor of their members, rather than throwing money at problems and overengineering them.
If NASA has the attitude that having a space station that was 99% safe, instead of 99.99% safe, and relied on the skill of the residents astronauts to fix any problems, we'd have the dual torus in 2001, instead of a little tin can. Good luck getting that in today's wiffle world.
Any history buff can tell you just how far a few, determined, idealistic men can go in changing history. Someday I may tell you how 13 men took on an Empire, and altared history (for the better), forever, 2000 years ago.
A. Rightmann
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 &
Dear Sir,
Could you please express the amount of money in a currency we slashdotters could understand? We prefer either metric assloads or libraries of congress.
Thank you,
slashdot
If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
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 ?
They had an astronaut on the morning show I listen to today talking some of the benefits of the Space Station. One was the ability to grow human tissue in 3D - in gravity, the tissue gets flattened when grown in a petri dish - which is helping them in researching tissue-type diseases like cancer (I'm sure this was much simplified for not-quite-awake listeners :) ).
I think that if a cure for cancer comes out of the ISS, then the price was worth it.
On the flip side, we would probably have to start living in outer space due to overcrowding caused by everyone living alot longer. :D
Support bacteria! It's the only culture most people seem to get.
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.
The tone of this article is that the money was spent badly. I have no doubt that it could be managed better, but it's not like the project is a write-off. I'd respond to the "What could you do with $40 billion" except I don't want to take validity away from the ISS.
I feel very strongly that we, as a species, need to have a presence in space. Right now, we are one asteroid impact away from extinction. The ISS is a very important step to ensuring that man-kind can survive a disaster like that. We need to get to Mars. We need to leave the solar system. We need to colonize other planets.
The real question is: Is $40 billion too much to spend to start us down the path of being truely, and I mean truely independent?
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.
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.
Do we hate NASA today or love them? Or hate NASA and love space? Or hate space and love other things to spend money on? My 2 cents is that money spent on space is always recouped by space-related technologies making their way into everyday use.
$45 per U Colocation Special
"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?"
Because an aerospace degree doesn't automatically make you eligible to cure cancer?
...if we force the trend-setters to stop wearing makeup, so "fashionable" people stop buying it, we could afford a second space station.
:-)
Looks like the old Geek vs. Jock perceptual rifts in high school values...
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Goddamnit people, can't anyone use the phrase "begging the question" correctly anymore?
Educate yourself regarding idioms.
$40 billion is a lot for one person, chump change for a nation.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
No, it does NOT "beg the question". It may "raise the question", but "begging the question" is something completely different.
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Begging the question is "a logical fallacy, of taking for granted or assuming the thing that you are setting out to prove. To take an example, you might say that lying is wrong because we ought always to tell the truth. That's a circular argument and makes no sense. Another instance is to argue that democracy must be the best form of government because the majority is always right. The fallacy was described by Aristotle in his book on logic in about 350BC. His Greek name for it was turned into Latin as petitio principii and then into English in 1581 as beg the question."
(http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-b
If you're going to use phrases, at least make sure you're using them correctly.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Let's hope O'Keefe can put in reliable accounting. Fudged numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. If we can get good accounting data, we can see just what is working and not working in all of NASA's endeavors. Solid accounting might also promote honesty in the field. One frequent complaint about NASA made by former workers is the amount of lies they were told. Add to that abuse and exploitation and you have the formula for driving people from the field.
We've seen too much throwing good money after bad. It's not only wrong to waste the taxpayers' money, it also diverts people from projects that might work. Too many failures also cause people who might enter space work to choose different careers -- ones where they might actually accomplish something. I mentioned to one friend that young people aren't going into aerospace any more. She commented that's because many people -- especially the technically oriented -- view aerospace as a dead end.
In retrospect, it would have been wiser to spend the money on work to lower the cost of getting things into orbit. The United States could have funded multiple, diverse research projects rather than this centralized, mismanaged failure. Lower cost to orbit would have paid off across the board -- for satellites, probes to distant planets, human work in space and much more.
Instead we got a project that put three people into a station that requires at least 2.5 people to just maintain it. And which might be mothballed any day because of problems with Russian participation.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
Maybe it's just me, but I'd find it incredibly ironic if with another 40 billion in funding we'd be able to cure Alzheimers....
Take that, Reagan!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
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.
For $40,000,000,000 we could have built a B Arc and got rid of the useless third of our population.
I got modded down for saying this last time (and linking to Libertarian "propaganda"), but why does everyone continue to belive that the government can do a better job at space exploration than the private sector? What the hell, I've got karma to burn, so I'll rant.
$40 billion. The space station isn't even done. Humans haven't left Earth's orbit since the '70's. $40 billion. It sickens me.
I suppose the argument goes something like, "Private companies won't fund altruistic space flight, so the gov't has to foot the bill." "Companies are too nearsighted; they wouldn't appreciate the impact of expensive space based R&D."
Well, I could care less about argument #1. If you want a "feel good" space mission, fund it with Space Tourism. I think Lance Bass has some seed money for ya.
As far as agument #2 goes: I read an interesting proposal by Harry Browne (LP candidate for U.S. President in '00): Instead of direcly funding a space agency, the government could hold a "competition". Set aside $X billion, and offer it as a "reward" for the company or companies that meet the stated goal. Hell, this concept should be considered for lots of "expensive" R&D things: Offer a few billion to the first auto company to break our dependancy on oil, for example.
I truly belive that if 50% of that government spending had been set aside as an incentive for the private sector to go to space, we would have seen an appreciable return by now. There has to be people that would love to figure how how to mine asteroids, efficently harness energy from the sun, etc. Instead we can't even launch a Backdoor Boy into space. I mean, aside from the occasional tourist, has there been any appreciable return from that $40 billion yet? Not that I'm, aware of.
So, I'll say it again, and I'll link to it again, and you'll mod me down again: Privatize NASA.
According to this the US spent almost $300B on defense in just 2001. So, if you're spending $40B from 1984 to 2002, that's nothing. Would you rather be killing people, or exploring space?
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
wage war on iraq ...
Not for $40 billion: best guesses by the administration put the tab around 200 billion - and do you think the administration is going to over-estimate the cost?
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
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.
It begs the question of what else could have been done with the same money and far superior management."
.
A moon sized space station capabable of destroying rebel bases.
Assuming, of course, there isn't some OSHA regulation against telepathically strangling incompetant middle-level management
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
The Russians aren't as risk adverse as NASA. (Hell, they're less risk adverse than I am!)
..." is to split your man rated (99.99% reliable) boosters from your cargo haulers (99% (95%?) reliable). Exactly NOT what NASA did when they designed the space camel, err... shuttle.
As described in LEO on the Cheap, the Russians do have a more realistic and economical approach to spaceflight. That is, they build their rockets with shipyard-level technology, not ballistic missile-level technology. Big, heavy, tough and dumb vs light, high-performance and expensive.
On point made in "LEO
And for God's sake, have a plan with a definate goal, not "lets get everybody together and put on a show"!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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!!!!
We're talking about 23 years of expenditures. The first station design by Reagan was in '84, the 6.6 billion budget addition from GW Bush is slated to go until 2007. Even if the totals run closer to the highly overestimated answer of 100 Billion (by the GAO), that's still only about 4 billion per year for a technological marvel that was supposed to be supported by 3/4 of the world's space programs but is ultimately built primarily by the US.
The Russians have been useless in getting any part of it done, so in order to maintain our own timetable and keep expenditures reasonable, we've had to either help them or replace their efforts, so that cadres of NASA employees weren't being bankrolled to sit on their hands waiting for the Russians.
If the ISS weren't so stifled by a lack of support from countries who previously voiced their desire to be involved, then it'd not only have cost us less but have been bigger and more capable of sustaining a maintenance crew AND a scientific staff. Instead, they're limited to a maintenance crew who dabble in science, so the returns have been limited.
Given that we spent almost 1 billion to blow up the dirt in Afghanistan for a month, I think 4 billion a year in space development is only fair.
The only question that remains is could the 4 billion (or for that matter, the 1 billion from the DoD as well) be spent on more important domestic issues, like the economy, healthcare, education, and building Krispy Kreme's in Boston, Mass...
The answer is of course, a resounding yes. I'm sure every teacher in America would like a 100% pay increase. Our kids would be the smartest around and in 15 years, they'd come up with fiscal savings plans to outdo even the tightest of Swiss banks. But the likelihood that something so radical would occur is miniscule, so instead of worrying about where 40 billion dollars over 20 years could have gone, worry about how to get American AIDS victims to give Bill Gates an 8 ft condom instead of the Indians AIDS victims. Get money that doesn't have to funnel through the government into the hands of those causes you find justify their cost. NASA will keep getting top dollar projects along with the DoD for the forseeable future. The short-term goal must lie in monies garnered from someone else's pockets.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
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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?)
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.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
But disbanding the army is a canard. Almost no one recommends that. The issue is how much, of $350 billion+ (the link is joking, but the figure is about right) is appropriate, or could be diverted to other projects. I assumed the original poster was referring to military waste. How much will the Iraq war cost? Is it necessary? The so-so peace has been maintained for many reasosns economic and diplomatic, in addition to military. There are many options, I don't think it can be said we have the best ones.
But disbanding the army is a canard. Almost no one recommends that.
The point is to illustrate that the military is a vital part of keeping the peace. Too many people just assume that the point of the military is to arbitrarily kill people and break things. There really are bad people in the world.
The issue is how much, of $350 billion+ [satirewire.com] (the link is joking, but the figure is about right) is appropriate, or could be diverted to other projects.
I don't know, and few people really do. All I know is that I would rather err on the side of having too much military than not enough military.
There are many options, I don't think it can be said we have the best ones.
I agree that there are certainly a lot of options, and no one has a crystal ball to know the best ones. But there are those who think that the military option is never the right option, and I vehemently disagree with those people. Sometimes ass needs to be kicked in the short term in order to save a lot of lives in the long term. Imagine if Hitler had been beat down in the 1930s rather than the 1940s.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
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.
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'.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog