Debunking the Trillion-Dollar Space Myth

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

Comments

I'm just curious

[SixDimensionalArray]

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

No, NASA can handle it just fine themselves

[rhadamanthus]

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

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

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

--rhad

Re:No, NASA can handle it just fine themselves

[argStyopa]

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

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

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

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

nice idea

[TamMan2000]

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

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

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

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

Re:Poverty

[negacao]

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

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

Make It Profitable And It Will Fly

[DynaSoar]

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

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

Re:Is not a trillion, what is it?

[AKAImBatman]

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

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

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

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

Here's the plan:

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

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

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

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

Cost figures:

Engergia Vulkan Factory Retooling: 10-15 million

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re:The goverment pays extra for waste...

[Zordak]

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

Nasa's 12 billion dollar pen (sic)

[zakezuke]

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

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

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

Teflon and chips came from the Manhattan project

[Tangurena]

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

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

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

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

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