Slashdot Mirror
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?"
A reporter not checking facts? I'm shocked I tell you!
Next thing you know, you'll be telling me that someone on slashdot did the same thing!
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?
"Humor writer Dave Barry, however, may have summarized the situation the best. "The Bush administration says the Mars mission can be accomplished for only 143.8 zillion dollars," Barry wrote. "But critics claim that the true cost is likely to be much more like 687 fillion dillion dollars. (These numbers are imaginary, but trust me, they're as accurate as any other cost estimates you see about the Mars mission.)""
I mean, how the hell are we going to put a man on Mars for 1 trillion dollars when it takes one hundred billion dollars alone to keep a laser on the moon from destroying Earth?
Really people, think it through.
- sm
It could easily cost at least one trillion dollars over the next 20+ years to get humans to Mars. Look at how much the U.S. thought it would cost originally to get to the Moon, $10-20 billion. And you know they spent way more than that actually doing it. $20+ billion to get the Moon 30+ years ago can easily translate to $1+ trillion to get to Mars in the next 20 years.
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.
It seems like more and more that people are just printing/reporting what ever "facts" they come across to forward their own agenda.
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.
Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.
"It's probably a misplaced decimal point....I always screw up some mundane detail like that"
WTF? Over?
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
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
Look at the reality though - ISS, Shuttle etc. Name one of these programs that has not overrun its budget by a substantial margin.
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...
Heck, I'll even kick back in a hefty campaign contribution.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Uh, that's a takeoff on a quote attributed to American congressman Everett Dirksen. "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money."
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
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.
some rouge asteriod
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.
After further investigation, the budget breakdown is as follows:
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
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Could this kill the plan before it has a chance to start? No, what will kill the plan is when NASA's responsibility is massively increased, but their funding only increases a few percent....
(The cynic in me noted the timing of W's announcement... "War? Death? um... Hey, Lookit the Moon! Lookit Mars! Perty, eh y'all?")
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Original quote was "A billion here a billion there, after a while you're talking real money!" and was atributed to Evert Dirksen of Illinois. Actually, if you amertise the cost of the 60s NASA programs as development e costs of doing business in the creation of: computers, chips, Intenret, out modern culture/ technology/ and all our jobs/ etc. It comes out cheap. And besides: we got Velcro, Teflon and Tang thrown in for free!
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Amortized over a decade or more of work, $1 trillion doesn't seem so bad. Especially considering $100bn/year is a fraction of what we spend on our military.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
the plan could cost as much as $1 trillion
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...
I would gripe at you for not reading the article, but the server is only barely responsive.
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.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
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...)
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
"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.
And why not? In some parts of Vegas, $500 is the market price for a screw...
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
This is a complex issue. On the one hand, the space program has many more benefits than initially aparent. Innumerable medical, technological, and biological discoveries have stemmed from NASA and the space program. These have disseminated into the public and have improved our overall quality of life. Presumably, similar discoveries would take place with such a large mission.
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.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
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.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
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.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
A little history on this is in order. Imagine wavy vertical lines transporting you back to the past.
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 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 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 different plans 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.
Blaze a trail to the New World
The cost of colonizing our solar system (which for self-contained colonies probably will far exceed one trillion) can be better spent on asteroid surveillance and making the world a better place so we don't need nuclear weapons.
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.)
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.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
I dunno... I think that if a permanent manned base on the moon and a fairly comprehensive exploratory trip to Mars could be made for $500B, that might not be too bad a deal. The mineral rights for the moon alone could be worth quite a lot. Titanium and aluminum are found in vast quantities in some areas in the form of ores that, while not the preferred source on earth, are still quite usable. An abundance of electrical energy without any worries about what tailings might harm or kill may make for a very attractive investment.
The biggest question is how you get them safely back to earth, or how the manufacturing facilities are set up on the moon.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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
p en.asp
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.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Your argument would make sense if a navy aircraft carrier could fly.
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.