the reason for the high cost of getting back to the moon;

[halman]

john_316,<br /><br />I have to take issue with something that you said:<br /><br /><br />"I know its still early on in even speculating how much this will cost but if the price tag even hits 250 million per launch then I fail to see any gains what so-ever in the endeavor. Then we just can wait to Bronson and those guys get us there."<br /><br />You are talking about entities which have never put anything in orbit! I am not aware of any private organization which is even close to putting a man in orbit, much less four of them. And the rate of advance right now for private space efforts is a crawl, because there is not the funding to have several rockets in the pipeline at any given time. Bronson will be doing sub-orbital tourist flights when his program does get off the ground, and that is many orders of magnitude from being able to go orbital.<br /><br />The Russians have a man rated expendable launch vehicle in operation right now, and flies them on a regular basis. If we were to treat them as a contractor, we could accelerate our space program considerably. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>