Costs of space exploration

[pmn1]

Not sure if this is the right board but here goes.<br /><br />The usual critics of space expenditure have come out of the woodwork following the Pluto mission lauch.<br /><br />Does anyone have figures for the annual spending in the US and Europe on...<br /><br />Pets<br />Tobacco<br />Cosmetics<br />Alcohol<br />Gambling<br /><br />I had a figure of 970 billion dollars in the US a couple of years ago for pets, alcohol, gambling and tobacco.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[spacefire]

alcohol...yumm! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>http://asteroid-invasion.blogspot.com</p><p>http://www.solvengineer.com/asteroid-invasion.html </p><p> </p> </div>

 

[qso1]

The answers to your question have been covered quite well by CalliArcale and others. The only thing I could add at this point is that the cost estimates you cited for shuttle are well below the published estimates as are the expendable rockets. Shuttle costing around $500 million dollars a shot and expendables ranging from $150 million for Delta rockets (Not the heavy Delta) and some $250 million or more for Titan IV.<br /><br />Spacester:<br />A closing thought on “the cost of space”: the cost of NOT “doing space” should be considered in whatever evaluation one undertakes on the subject. <br /><br />Qso1:<br />I agree with the above closing thought and would add that if one is concerned about the cost of space flight, there are much bigger Government spending fish<br />to fry, such as an approximate $400 billion dollar deficit annually since 2003.<br /><br />BTW, this was a reply to Freesharks "Why is spaceflight sooooo expensive?". A technical problem on just that thread has prevented me from posting this reply there. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[qso1]

This is the correct place for your post, and on the cost of human spaceflight, we can afford it and probably can afford $20 B dollars annually. Consider the following.<br /><br />The record budget for NASA was fiscal year 1965 at approximately $5.5B dollars ($32.8B dollars today)<br /><br />Todays annual budget is around $16B dollars or $2.7B dollars in 1965.<br /><br />Critics bemoan NASA budgets always citing we cannot afford it...this despite two back to back booming economies (Clinton Reagan era).<br /><br />This decline of NASA budgets started around 1973 and has been going on since, despite periodic marginal budget increases. NASA has definetely not kept pace with inflation.<br /><br />http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[mlorrey]

$5.5 billion/yr is a whole lot more than is being invested in entirely private space development. Virgin invested $190 million, Musk has invested maybe $20-30 million over 3-4 yrs. Bezos has invested likely some similar amount. Beal dumped $100 million and got sabotaged by NASA.<br /><br />Every time the space advocacy in the general public gets enough ears turned in DC to do something right, the PTB always figure out a way to sabotage it so they can make it a failure by improper or changing expectations: it happened with the DC-X, the X-33, and with RASCAL. That is always the way the powerful remain in charge: by rigging the rules. <br /><br />This isn't unique to NASA, as a political party official, I've seen similar tactics used by the two major parties to keep others from becoming challengers: when the LP built up an actual caucus in the NH legislature in the early 1990's, the GOP and DNC ganged up and rewrote the election law to require a higher vote percentage in statewide elections to qualify for automatic ballot status. This has also been done in other states as well. <br /><br />They do not share power with anyone who is not in the in-crowd.

 

[qso1]

The 5.5B dollar figure I posted is not just manned spaceflight, its all of NASA activity though a large percentage went to Apollo that year. It is still expensive however. Especially when converted to todays dollars.<br /><br />Other Government agencies waste quite a bit more. From a 1996 or 99 Orlando Sentinel report I referenced one time, Medicare was being investigated for loosing $23B dollars one year. They lost $12B the next year and said something like "We did better this year, only lost $12B dollars". Add the 2 figures and you have just over twice the amount of NASAs annual budgets.<br /><br />Then theres that $400 B dollars + deficit.<br /><br />Still, until private industry does the takeover of orbital spaceflight. NASAs all we have for now. The money being invested by Branson, Musk, etc is just the start. Those figures will go up in time. Current investment is mainly for financing suborbital flight and if they can get that off the ground. Orbital flight will follow. Sub orbital will have to at least show promise of ROI before anyone invests in orbital flights.<br /><br />I'll be surprised if anyone can claim the new $50 million prize for getting someone to orbit without spending more than the prize itself. This already happened with the "X" prize but fortunately Paul Allen has extremelly deep pockets.<br /><br />The DC-X fell victim to the Clinton Administration decision to go with the X-33 Venture Star proposal. The X-33 fell victim to a budget cap imposed by NASA of about $1 billion dollars and when development of the LH-2 tank encountered trouble, the budget was exceeded.<br /><br />As I recall, that first billion was provided by Lockheed, their own money used to finance the X-33. Once it became apparent they could not develop the X-33 within that guidline, NASA canned it. And of course, Lockheed was not going to invest anymore of their own cash.<br /><br />The broader questions that should be asked, that I try to focus on:<br /><br />Why do we believe we cannot afford <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>