Andrew Gray wrote in
:

In article , Jan C. Vorbrüggen wrote:
Jorge,

Viking cost $972 million in then-year dollars, or about $2.4 billion
in today's dollars, for two orbiters and two landers.

is there a handy spreadsheet or somesuch you've got that does the
then-year- to-today's-dollar conversion?

Jorge, I believe, has many shiny spreadsheets...

Yes, indeedy... my favorite source is the government itself:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...s/hist10z1.xls

I use the GDP (chained) price index. There are lots of different indices
and the arguments between them can get pretty religious. I use this one
because it's available for all the years I want (including the oft-ignored
Transition Quarter), and because it's the index the government uses as the
basis for "constant dollar" R&D outlays. And it's in handy-dandy Excel
format, so I can just cut-n-paste the table into my spreadsheets and use
it.

Other spreadsheets can be downloaded he
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...eadsheets.html

Keep an eye out for the 2005 budget; it's due out in a week or so.

[The problem that does often crop up, though, is when costs are given
over a long period and not noted - I was playing around with Saturn V
costs a little while back, where they were given independent of year -
and $1 (FY65) is around $1.75 (FY75) or so... so take pinches of salt
as needed]

You can fudge it for short programs, or programs during periods of low
inflation. But it's a big problem for programs like Viking, which spanned
several years of high inflation (and to top it off, the landings occurred
during the TQ).

--
JRF

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