Why is space travel SOOOO expensive?

freeshark · Jan 18, 2006

I just don't get it! $1,500,000,000 just to send a fancy golf cart to mars????? HOLY COW! What I want to know is where EXACTLY does this money go? I mean even if you count 10 years of salary for the 200 people that will work on this project you are only looking at about $120,000,000! The actual machine they will send up can NOT cost more then $20,000,000. Add $50,000,000 of budget for building the thing and expences and stuff. I don't know how much the plutonium generator would cost but I will eat my hat if it is more then $20,000,000 That leaves the rocket and the rocket fuel. Tha would only be about $20,000,000 since the shuttle costs aout $100,000,000 to send in to outer space each time. That is about $230,000,000 give or take 100 million. I understand that Nasa doesn't know how to save a buck if the planet depended it on it but still how do you go from 230 million to 1.5 billion? If a private company were to undergo this opperation it would cost less then $100,000,000 and it would probably turn a profit to boot! Can any one explain where the other 1.2 billion $$ is going? ---------The MSL mission, including cost of a launcher, is in the range of $1.5 billion, Cook said. Under consideration to boost the Mars Science Laboratory is either the Delta IV or the ATLAS V rocket.------- Thanks! Dave

argosy · Jan 18, 2006

My best guess would be...There's no competition, and NASA is a gigantic company(or administration). A lot of people work for NASA, and they must be payed. If NASA was a private company, I guess expenses would probably come down. Its similar if you compare factorys in communism with NASA. Both are gigantic and owned by the state. And thus not very profitable

(China is another story. I'm talking about USSR and other "true" communist countrys)

CalliArcale · Jan 18, 2006

You *do* realize, don't you, that the systems are all built by private companies, not by NASA? Going back to the original post.... I just don't get it! $1,500,000,000 just to send a fancy golf cart to mars????? Well, first off, it's not just a fancy golf cart, and you're not just paying for lobbing the thing at Mars. There's a lot more going on than most people realize. After all, NASA wants to actually get some use out of the thing, or what would be the point? Anyway, you need to add up all the costs (and I do mean ALL the costs) to find out why a billion and a half dollars is plausible. You appear to have pulled a bunch of numbers out of thin air for your post. I don't have time to come up with a better estimate myself (I have a meeting shortly), but I might do so later on. I really don't think you're accounting for everything, especially since you describe the vehicle as a "fancy golf cart". It's a heck of a lot more than a fancy golf cart. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff." -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

vmiguy · Jan 18, 2006

Hi, guys, Actually, it has always been said that the main cost in manned space flights is keeping the men alive inside the space ship. If it was just sending a rocket to Mars with nothing inside, and we didn't care when it got there and didn't want to keep track of it or learn anything from it, then maybe it might only cost $120 million. (As for the tired argument about competition, please explain why our contractors charge the army $10 per mass produced meal and $6 per gallon of gasoline? Because of the additional costs involved that we might not think of). Just like the drug industry that charges $50 for a 2.5 cent pill, they have to recapture all of the millions and millions that went into research and safety. Each new space mission is a completely new project, and requires huge amounts of new research for studying not only how to get the men to Mars and back, but how to keep them alive and able to function when they get there after being in space for over a year. In order to keep a large crew alive and functional for a year or more in space, the craft is going to have to be huge, which means it cannot be launched from Earth. The amount of force required for breaking orbit in one jump would probably tear the craft into tiny pieces. Instead, it will have to either be launched in pieces and assembled in orbit (like the ISS), or even better will have to be asembled at a permanent base on the moon where there can be support and tracking facilities. It would also have to be huge because the trip will be so expensive, the crew would have to bring back a large amount of material for study. Unlike the earlier space program, this endeavor is just too expensive to be conducted just to make the Russians look bad or to keep everyone's minds off of problems here on Earth. The research and development will also have to include new and innovative methods for the crew to take care of themselves and the craft for the two plus years of

vogon13 · Jan 18, 2006

Strength of our materials, the energy available from chemical reactions, and the intensity of earth's gravititional field are just about perfectly balanced. Alter any of those three constants and cheap space flight becomes a possibility. For instance, going to nuclear energy instead of chemical makes orbiting a pound of material cost pennies instead of thousands of dollars. For instance, enormously strong materials in compression would allow towers to be built 200,000 to 400,000 feet high, launch from atop such a structure would be drastically easier. For instance, any kind of technology that could modulate gravity would have enormous facility in this area. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!So many people, so few recipes !!Let's clean up this stinkhole !! </div>

chriscdc · Jan 18, 2006

Also all these probes are entirely new which means tests tests tests. Each individual component may cost a few thousand at most, but for everyone launched from earth, you have tested several copies to destruction. I do wish that they could bring in the economies of scale at some point. For example they could keep most of the current rover design the same for a mission to the moon. You would need to improve the temperature range over which it could function and a new landing vehicle. You could launch similar probes to some of the large asteroids like ceres, but you would have to increase the solar panel area or use an RTG. But I suppose mass production would cost say $10billion, before economy of scale becomes a factor, and you could get 2 and a bit years of the STS and ISS for that much.

propforce · Jan 18, 2006

My best guess would be...There's no competition, ...... Actually it is exactly the opposite. There's no market. Imagine the cost if Ford only builds one car??? I have no clue how much that car would cost but I know it will cost more than $5 Billions/b>. A friend of mine works at Ford and he told me that, every 4 years they change the shape of vehicle slightly for every model and that tooling cost alone exceeds $5 billions. The difference is that Ford can spread that $5 billions into over 250,000 cars per year for 4 years. There are no market for 1 million launches to Mars !!! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

CalliArcale · Jan 18, 2006

That's the problem in a nutshell. There's so much that normally gets prorated over the entire production run that just can't come into play for this. Space, I'm sad to say, is still not a truly self-sustainable commercial market. There was a brief time, during the telecom bubble, when people thought it was on the cusp of becoming so, but that proved mistaken. There just aren't enough buyers. Air-launch: a brilliant concept that could save a huge amount of money because suddenly you can launch from anywhere without building new facilities! Reality: there are so few launches that it really isn't significant; the existing facilities are more than adequate to serve the market. What could've been gained by increased flexibility has proven largely irrelevant. The same may yet be true of Atlas V, with its minimal pad-stay capability. Will Atlas fly often enough for that to matter? Testing got mentioned.... Wow, that's a huge area. I was on a space program not too long ago and we easily spent more on testing than on development. And we're not even the prime contractor! The prime's gonna spend a bundle on testing as well, and so will the end customer. They have to. Our subs test their components, we put them into a computer and test that, the customer accepts the computer, integrates it with other systems and tests that, builds the complete spacecraft and tests that, then the end customer receives the spacecraft and tests it, over and over.... The costs add up very quickly, especially because there's a lot of unique test equipment required for it. Special Test Equipment, it's called. A STE is a box used to test another box. They can be very large and very sophisticated; the ones we built (and sold to our customer, the prime contractor) are about twice the size of most refrigerators. It is a complicated, labor-intensive process to design the tests, design the neccesary equipment and software, implement those designs, create test procedures, test t <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff." -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

josh_simonson · Jan 18, 2006

I guess we could spend 250M$ to send a powerwheels from wal-mart to mars, and return it for store credit if it breaks down. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" />

mlorrey · Jan 18, 2006

Keep in mind that there are 10,000 people that work on the shuttle program, and the new launchers are supposed to be job-neutral (i.e. nobody on the dole at KSC is going to lose their job, despite the ample evidence that that is the best way to save money on launch costs), and that a $75k salary typically costs $150k due to admin overhead, taxes, ssn, etc etc etc.... Then imagine the 100,000 other NASA employees who are working on the development labs and test sites and wind tunnels, etc etc etc, plus all the management overhead and quality control people, plus the contract oversight and auditing people (whose job is to make sure your tax dollars "don't get wasted", these guys are the dryest and highest paid comedians in the country). There are is a literal army of people whose job is to make sure your tax money isn't "wasted", of course none of them ever proposes that their job is a waste of tax dollars... There likely will be a LOT more people than 200 whose salaries will be charged to that fancy golf cart. Beyond NASA, you have all the private contractors who will actually do the building of the golf cart, the engineering of the golf cart. My experience in the aerospace industry is that the engineers are always engineering everything to the nth degree, gold plating and doing all the bells and whistles. Particularly when it comes to weights of things. NASA is never just happy with things off the shelf. The idea of building a system from off the shelf parts is anathema, after all, their job is to research and advance the state of technology, and you can't do that by using things that are already being manufactured. As commented above, they pay $700 for a hammer because they had to hire an auditor to make sure the right hammer was being bought, who had an engineer do an engineering study to explain why all the other hammers out there were no good, why THIS particular hammer, or this particular custom designed hammer, has to be used for the job at h

propforce · Jan 19, 2006

"... Keep in mind that there are 10,000 people that work on the shuttle program...... and that a $75k salary typically costs $150k due to admin overhead, taxes, ssn, etc etc etc...." How much faith would you have on launches if they pay the shuttle workers only $6.75 an hour? <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /> "...Then imagine the 100,000 other NASA employees who are working on the development labs and test sites and wind tunnels, etc etc etc, plus all the management overhead and quality control people, plus the contract oversight and auditing people ..... There are is a literal army of people whose job is to make sure your tax money isn't "wasted..." That's because people like you who will be too quick to criticize if something goes wrong on this 'taxpayer funded program'. Quality and reliability cost money. Going somewhere no man has gone before and comeback safely !!... takes people to develop technology and all this takes time & money. My experience in the aerospace industry is that the engineers are always engineering everything to the nth degree, gold plating and doing all the bells and whistles. Particularly when it comes to weights of things. You have a very limited and biased experience !! I'd take it that you are not one of those engineers. Hmmm... you must be one of those contract oversight and auditing people !! <img src="/images/icons/shocked.gif" /> Space hardware designers will do almost anything to reduce weight, so how does one reduce weight by gold plating and doing all the bells and whistles???? Ummm... unless it is required to meet the hostile space environment??? NASA is never just happy with things off the shelf. How do you get off-the-shelf "things" when no one makes them???? <</safety_wrapper> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

spacester · Jan 19, 2006

As a Design Engineer making a general statement about a given Design Goal, I am confident that if the basic objectives and constraints are recast, at the top-most level, the bottom-line cost of achieving the Design Goal can be changed by orders of magnitude. IOW, if you de-scope or even just re-scope a project, it can be made to cost a small fraction of a poorly crafted approach; in the best case, you can transform a project from a “cost center” into a “profit center”. In the case of Human Space Flight, the Design Goal can be stated something like “Get people up there affordably and have them do things without unnecessary delay”. That’s way too vague, so we need top-level objectives and constraints, from which is derived a top-level Strategy; together this is what could be called a ‘Space Architecture’. This vision in turn spawns a collection of Missions requiring certain Capabilities to be established with a group of Vehicles and Equipment. For NASA, as the Space Agency the people have tasked with implementing the design goal, there are at least two basic objectives that are “wrong” in terms of efficiently and expeditiously supporting the Design Goal. One false top-level objective is that “the mission of NASA is to develop cutting-edge technologies”. This is a false objective: it does not directly support the Goal. In fact the development of new technologies must be in the context of the objective of deploying the *correct* technologies to deliver the capabilities called for. I and others have said it for years: NASA needs to be in the technology deployment business, not the technology development business. To the extent that specific missions in support of the Goal are going to require technologies that do not exist, then by all means develop those, and give them top priority. But don’t adopt an objective that precludes things like COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) procurement: you’ve already sabotaged your Strategy. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

mlorrey · Jan 20, 2006

excellent post, spacester. You are right on, especially about the difference in making something a cost center vs a profit center. For instance: If instead of focusing on making space exploration a cost center to obtain science, and only allowing persons and equipment up in space to support that goal, NASA had instead set a goal of establishing a Disneyland In Orbit, funded by bonds that are paid back not by taxpayers, but by space tourists, NASA would have a crapload of people and infrastructure in orbit at no cost to the taxpayer AND universities would be able to send at least ten times as many scientists into orbit for less money than it costs today. Each scientist would have at least ten or twenty space tourists eager as hell to spend their vacation time doing the scientists gruntwork, and the tourists would be happy as hell to be doing it, AND they'd come away interested in privately funding the science of the people they worked for after they got home. Plus you'd raise a generation of kids who grow up thinking that science, math, and engineering are the coolest things ever, because they spent their childhood vacations with Mickey the Engineer, Pluto the Scientist, and Princess Hypatia the Mathemetician. I don't know why this never occured to NASA, there is a shining example of this not too far up the road from them...

vmiguy · Jan 20, 2006

Actually, there have been several ideas of semi-provatization of space in science fiction over the years, which I became very involved with in my old magazine THE ULTIMATE UNKNOWN. One of the better ideas was in "Walking Across Mars," where NASA gets part of its funding by a lottery for a passenger position on the space ship. Not only did they raise several billion dollars but they also were able to maintain public interest by having the winner sending regular messages back to earth. Another idea (in a not so interesting book that had very little to do with space) was sponsors would pay to have their logos on patches on the space suits, and whenever the suit was punctured the astronaut would grab a patch at random. The sponsor's products always enjoyed a spike in popularity. Talk to you later.

Testing · Jan 20, 2006

Did someone say testing? Let me bring up an example of a real world piece of a golf cart. Specification Linear electric actuator Quantity 15 1.3 lbs max 0.2 A@24V max 1 Kg output force 10mm total travel 1.4uM step increment 0.65uM drift over two hours 20 Hrs life over 6 years on orbit Operating environment 20 Kelvin Prove to the customer that the 15 deliverables meet all requirements and one qual unit will be tested to 2x life. The Critical Design Review document on this puppy is 165 pages. Don't even ask what they cost. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

freeshark · Jan 23, 2006

But testing, I AM asking what it costs. I love discussing space travel but I am not knowledgable enough to understand what those specifications mean. You could LITERALLY be describing a golf cart for all I know. If you know how much it costs then please enlighten us. I am just saying that NASA CAN and SHOULD figure out a way to reduce costs. Maybe by commercializing the technology once they are done with it? Dave

CalliArcale · Jan 23, 2006

<blockquote>In reply to:<hr />Maybe by commercializing the technology once they are done with it? <hr /></blockquote> You mean, recoup costs by selling it afterwards? The main problem with that is the law. It is illegal for them to compete in the private sector, because it's considered unfair for any government agency to do so. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff." -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

rocketman5000 · Jan 23, 2006

Spacester, Sounds like something the instructor would say from value engineering. Defining the scope of a project is often the most important part. If you are in the business of making watchs and not mechanical watches you'll probably jump on the digital watch band wagon and not fade into oblivion like the swiss did (incidently they invented the first digital watches)

rocketman5000 · Jan 23, 2006

Isn't most of what NASA does in the public domain? I was talking with a student from MIT last week working on a project within the scope of Vasimr and he informed me that the technology was purchased and the reason that nothing was heard recently was all new work was proprietary. If this is true is it legal for them to sell designs?

argosy · Jan 23, 2006

Why not make a new tax, a space tax...this way you could collect money for space travel exclusivly. Maybe it wouldn't be popular, but hey... nuthin's free You tax every workin man. You arrange them in categories, from the lowest to the highest paychecks. Thsi way much money could be raised, but it would be a political suicide. Maybe if we imagined a killer asteroide or a comet, say it would kill us in 30-40 years and that we need money to fund space exploration and save our civilization. I bet they would pay. Lie can be a good thing

CalliArcale · Jan 23, 2006

Yes, most of what NASA does is in the public domain. But when they contract work out, their contractors may retain proprietary control over some technologies they develop. In fact, this is very likely. So just because something was done under a NASA contract does not make the entirety of it public domain. NASA can charge a reasonable fee for duplication costs when you ask for some of their stuff under FOIA. But they generally have no control over how their contractors choose to sell technologies. I have no doubt that there is proprietary material from several companies in the VASIMR effort. It would not be legal for NASA to sell any of that proprietary material, and there are doubtless contractual limits forbidding them from doing so (as a condition of letting them look at the proprietary material). If they sold a private company's proprietary data, you can bet there'd be a lawsuit. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff." -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

Testing · Jan 23, 2006

In reality I can't tell you the selling price but can give you an idea of the complexity. In this case the linear actuators will be used to focus and point a set of mirrors for an infrared imaging system. When the actuator moves each step will be about 50 milionths of an inch. We have to measure it and record it. It has to be done in a vacuum chamber while the motor is at 20 Kelvin, or minus 253 Celcius. I have about $50,000 in purchased equipment to do this. I have proven we can get to 20K in vacuum, now I have to align the displacement sensors and characterize the system for stability issues. This is just my part of the program. They have not yet built or tested the actuators. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

mlorrey · Jan 23, 2006

Yes, it is legal for them to sell technologies that are public domain. There is a whole section of NASA that does technology transfer contracts. The fact that VASIMR was purchased is a pretty good indication that it will wind up as a drive that is on the commercial market (or drives developed from it) at some point in the future, so long as NASA didn't sell it for a pittance that would allow a company with a competetive technology to just bury it.

freeshark · Jan 24, 2006

So Nasa just offers all their technology to the public for peanuts? That is just too interesting to pass up an investigation. Does any one know how to get a catalogue? Or ask for information? A web site? A phone number? Where is the Law that says that a Government angency Can't sell their technology? I mean seriously! They would make all the money they needed if they could. But I do see the confilct of interest there. Dave

argosy · Jan 24, 2006

This was also done earlier in history. I mean, lots of NASA original technology is found in todays cars, planes, computers, materials. So I really don't see the reason why NASA shouldn't seel their technology, but for a proper money.

Why is space travel SOOOO expensive?

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