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

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.

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.