$64 Billion and seventeen years to land on the moon. What's wrong with this picture?

This week's AW&ST:

"Pressed by Congress for cost estimates on Bush's Moon/Mars
exploration plan, NASA releases some figures to back up its pretty but
imprecise "sand chart" that purports to demonstrate there's no hidden
cost "balloon" in the plan (AW&ST Jan. 26, p. 22). According to the
Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service, NASA assumes it
will cost $64 billion in Fiscal 2003 dollars to land humans on the
Moon in 2020. That amount includes $24 billion to build and operate
the proposed Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) through 2020, plus $40
billion in Fiscal 2011-20 to build and operate a CEV lunar lander. "

Scott Ferrin wrote in
:


This week's AW&ST:

"Pressed by Congress for cost estimates on Bush's Moon/Mars
exploration plan, NASA releases some figures to back up its pretty but
imprecise "sand chart" that purports to demonstrate there's no hidden
cost "balloon" in the plan (AW&ST Jan. 26, p. 22). According to the
Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service, NASA assumes it
will cost $64 billion in Fiscal 2003 dollars to land humans on the
Moon in 2020. That amount includes $24 billion to build and operate
the proposed Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) through 2020, plus $40
billion in Fiscal 2011-20 to build and operate a CEV lunar lander. "

That's about two-thirds the cost of Apollo, in current dollars. That sounds
about right, considering that 1) we've done it before, but 2) everyone who
did it the first time is retired or dead.

What did *you* find wrong with the picture?


--
JRF

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check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

On 01 Mar 2004 05:45:17 GMT, "Jorge R. Frank"
wrote:

Scott Ferrin wrote in
:


This week's AW&ST:

"Pressed by Congress for cost estimates on Bush's Moon/Mars
exploration plan, NASA releases some figures to back up its pretty but
imprecise "sand chart" that purports to demonstrate there's no hidden
cost "balloon" in the plan (AW&ST Jan. 26, p. 22). According to the
Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service, NASA assumes it
will cost $64 billion in Fiscal 2003 dollars to land humans on the
Moon in 2020. That amount includes $24 billion to build and operate
the proposed Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) through 2020, plus $40
billion in Fiscal 2011-20 to build and operate a CEV lunar lander. "

That's about two-thirds the cost of Apollo, in current dollars. That sounds
about right, considering that 1) we've done it before, but 2) everyone who
did it the first time is retired or dead.

What did *you* find wrong with the picture?


Seventeen years.

Scott Ferrin wrote in
:

On 01 Mar 2004 05:45:17 GMT, "Jorge R. Frank"
wrote:

Scott Ferrin wrote in
m:


This week's AW&ST:

"Pressed by Congress for cost estimates on Bush's Moon/Mars
exploration plan, NASA releases some figures to back up its pretty
but imprecise "sand chart" that purports to demonstrate there's no
hidden cost "balloon" in the plan (AW&ST Jan. 26, p. 22). According
to the Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service, NASA
assumes it will cost $64 billion in Fiscal 2003 dollars to land
humans on the Moon in 2020. That amount includes $24 billion to
build and operate the proposed Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV)
through 2020, plus $40 billion in Fiscal 2011-20 to build and
operate a CEV lunar lander. "

That's about two-thirds the cost of Apollo, in current dollars. That
sounds about right, considering that 1) we've done it before, but 2)
everyone who did it the first time is retired or dead.

What did *you* find wrong with the picture?


Seventeen years.

There's two possible responses to this:

1) The actual date for the first lunar return in the plan was a range
between 2015-2020, and CRS automatically picked the most pessimistic. It
could happen sooner.

2) Even if it is 2020, why hurry? The artificial deadline placed on Apollo
helped force some design decisions that ensured that the program would be
too expensive to sustain.


--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

On 01 Mar 2004 06:27:36 GMT, "Jorge R. Frank"
wrote:

Scott Ferrin wrote in
:

On 01 Mar 2004 05:45:17 GMT, "Jorge R. Frank"
wrote:

Scott Ferrin wrote in
:


This week's AW&ST:

"Pressed by Congress for cost estimates on Bush's Moon/Mars
exploration plan, NASA releases some figures to back up its pretty
but imprecise "sand chart" that purports to demonstrate there's no
hidden cost "balloon" in the plan (AW&ST Jan. 26, p. 22). According
to the Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service, NASA
assumes it will cost $64 billion in Fiscal 2003 dollars to land
humans on the Moon in 2020. That amount includes $24 billion to
build and operate the proposed Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV)
through 2020, plus $40 billion in Fiscal 2011-20 to build and
operate a CEV lunar lander. "

That's about two-thirds the cost of Apollo, in current dollars. That
sounds about right, considering that 1) we've done it before, but 2)
everyone who did it the first time is retired or dead.

What did *you* find wrong with the picture?


Seventeen years.

There's two possible responses to this:

1) The actual date for the first lunar return in the plan was a range
between 2015-2020, and CRS automatically picked the most pessimistic. It
could happen sooner.

2) Even if it is 2020, why hurry? The artificial deadline placed on Apollo
helped force some design decisions that ensured that the program would be
too expensive to sustain.

The idea isn't so much to hurry but to not waste time. Look at any
military procurement effort and you'll see that the longer you stretch
it out the more costs skyrocket. There isn't really any new
technology to develope so why stretch it out when you don't need to?
So you can develope an engine that gets two more Isp and costs five
times as much? I probably sound like a broken record (for those who
remember records LOL) but until they bring launch costs down
substantially, nothing significant is going to be affordable. If they
were serious about going to the moon and mars the first order of
business would be funding the developement of a CHEAP way to get
pounds into orbit. As it is, it just looks like more vaporware for
political purposes.

Scott Ferrin wrote...

snip

If they
were serious about going to the moon and mars the first

order of business would be funding the development of

a CHEAP way to get pounds into orbit. As it is, it just

looks like more vaporware for political purposes.

I think developing 'cheap' access to space would be way down on the priority
list. Maybe a little cheaper, but if its too cheap that would risk the
possibility of space supremacy slipping from the US. China, without the
millstones of congress and public opinion, might run with 'cheap pounds to
orbit' faster than we expect.

- Peter

Not to mention that the deadline that was imposed on Apollo forced a
"whatever the cost" attitude to make the date.

GO FEVER!

On 01 Mar 2004 06:27:36 GMT, "Jorge R. Frank"
wrote:

Even if it is 2020, why hurry? The artificial deadline placed on Apollo
helped force some design decisions that ensured that the program would be
too expensive to sustain.

Good point. And although I am not big on what-ifs, I read an article
some years ago saying that if EOR had been used instead of LOR, we
would have more of an infrastructure in Earth orbit as a result.

Even so, why take so long to develop Constellation that NASA has to
figure out how to buy Soyuzes in the interim? I don't recall Apollo's
development taking that long, even accounting for the fact that the
vehicle was originally proposed before Mercury even flew.




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Michael Gallagher writes:
Even so, why take so long to develop Constellation that NASA has to
figure out how to buy Soyuzes in the interim? I don't recall Apollo's
development taking that long, even accounting for the fact that the
vehicle was originally proposed before Mercury even flew.

Apollo had piles of money to spend. A better yardstick would be the
shuttle development program. The CEV program is at the very early
concept stage. In the shuttle program, this would correspond to a
period when the configuration of the vehicle was very much in flux
(they weren't close to a "design").

Space shuttle design studies were being done in early 1969. The SSME
was on the test stand as early as 1970. STS-1 didn't fly until 1981.

Not having a CEV test flight until 2014 isn't unreasonable when you
consider how long it took the shuttle to get to STS-1 (it's first
orbital test flight, complete with two astronauts in full pressure
suits and e-seats).

Jeff
--
Remove "no" and "spam" from email address to reply.
If it says "This is not spam!", it's surely a lie.

Michael Gallagher writes:

Even so, why take so long to develop Constellation that NASA has to
figure out how to buy Soyuzes in the interim? I don't recall Apollo's
development taking that long, even accounting for the fact that the
vehicle was originally proposed before Mercury even flew.

Wasn't Apollo first commissioned in 1959? So the crash program
took eight years to get close to flyability (Apollo 1 *might* well have
launched, after all) and nine to be workable. Given this, a 2004 to a
2014 schedule for manned flights ... isn't that far off.

--
Joseph Nebus
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