Brian Short wrote:


Hop David wrote:



Charles Buckley wrote:

Hop David wrote:



(snip) It's been my impression that even if NASA doesn't follow
Zubrin's plan to the letter, they hope to use in situ resources _if_
they do a manned Mars mission.




Mars Reference Mission.

http://cmex-www.arc.nasa.gov/MarsNew...ion_Table.html




Thanks. IIRC years ago NASA gave daddy Bush a half trillion dollar
price tag for going to Mars. And 500 billion is what the hair spray
heads on my TV news were saying.

Am I correct in believing the Mars Reference Mission will be much
cheaper? (I couldn't find any cost guestimates during my quick perusal
of the URL)


I've seen estimates from $30B to $50B. Certainly more than a 5%
increase in NASAs current budget per year.

Brian



You have to take into account that NASa has been funding a lot
of specific technologies under the radar in very specific technology
programs that does not show up as a line item under the Mars Program.
They've already built out various in situ plants for use on Mars
as well as much of the life support.

The idea of funding tech off the reference mission is to knock
the cost of development down to the point they can go to Congress
and say "We need X number of dollars to go to Mars" where X is the magic
number where it becomes possible. That number is closer, btw, to
$10 billion than $50 billion. And, I suspect that Congress would not
even believe that estimate.