4 ms·

Yeah, it helped when NASA had this: "We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy

by Reedx 7y ago

Yeah, it helped when NASA had this: "We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills; because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win"

jjoonathan 7y ago
Yes, and the equivalent of 175 billion dollars per year (4% of federal budget times 4.4T$/y). I'm going to go out on a limb and propose that the money may have helped, too.
- twh270 7y ago
  The money was necessary. But if it had been run like a typical government program, it would have been 25 years before we landed on the moon.
- TrueDuality 7y ago
  That is not how inflationary comparisons work with government budgets. The entire documented cost of the Apollo program[1] was $25.4 billion over 11 years. Adjusted for 2018 dollars that's $153 billion over 11 years, which works out to just about $14 billion per year. The total expenditure in the 2018 United States budget was $4.109 trillion[2] or %0.34 of yearly expenditures. Budgets do not follow inflationary trends even remotely, the 1961 expenditure[3] was $181.588 billion (wow that's pretty crazy). For the year that makes the Apollo program %1.2 of the federal expenditure. Another useful point of reference, the entire NASA organization in 2018 had an operating budget of $19.2 billion and this has to cover all of the mandated projects such as the SLS. They're also responsible for maintaining and monitoring a lot of infrastructure for other agencies (the weather service, DSN, etc) which wasn't the case during the Apollo mission. NASA itself is kind of left with scraps. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_federal_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_federal_bud... [3]: https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/spending_chart_1960_1970USb_20s2li011mcn_F0f https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/spending_chart_1960_1970USb_...
  - jjoonathan 7y ago
    > That is not how inflationary comparisons work Right, but normalizing to the price of bread and milk is even more ridiculous than normalizing to the federal budget, which is not excellent for this purpose, as you point out. In any case, thanks for digging up more numbers. I stand by my claim that money (and enough assurance of continued money to bet everything on one large project) is key.
    - h3throw 7y ago
      > Right, but normalizing to the price of bread and milk is even more ridiculous than normalizing to the federal budget, which is not excellent for this purpose, as you point out. The CPI is composed of much more than that: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2016.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2016.pdf
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      > normalizing to the price of bread and milk is even more ridiculous than normalizing to the federal budget No it's not. Maybe normalize to the median income if you don't like bread and milk, but how much the government spends on education, health care, interest, military fleets, farm subsidies... that's not relevant to NASA's budget.
jonshariat 7y ago
Doesn't that help his point? They aimed to do it in just 10 years that was a very short deadline considering.
roymurdock 7y ago
We needed to beat the russians to the moon, it was part of the cold war effort, as much as I agree with these ideals they need to be tempered in reality and politics. We have no comparable political need for space exploration today.
- robbiep 7y ago
  Unless you’re concerned about us as a species not making it out of the local minima of the comfort of earth before an extinction level event wipes us out. Which, fair enough, most politicians aren’t.
  - roymurdock 7y ago
    We are so, so far away from being able to leave earth and terraform/colonize other planets. A better argument is that we might find new technology or make new observations that help raise the standard of living on earth through designing to the requirements of space survival and exploration. But it's hard to translate potential ROI into spending when there are much more pressing problems here on earth.
    - nwah1 7y ago
      Not true. We've had sufficient technology for a long time. We've been sending robots to Mars for decades. We just haven't made it an objective to terraform Mars. We've even been quite cautious about avoiding even the possibility of transporting microbes there and "contaminating" it. But the basic mechanics of how to terraform are known. Elon Musk mentioned nuking the poles of Mars as an option. Changing the gas composition could be done, albeit slowly, with enough resources and motivation. You can send robots in advance of human settlers to prepare things. Self-replicating robots would be more ideal, and that is not a solved problem, but you could likely build partially self-replicating robots that are replenished with "vitamins" much like how the RepRap project does. Various NASA theorists have written about such things http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/ http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/

by Reedx 7y ago

jjoonathan 7y ago

Yes, and the equivalent of 175 billion dollars per year (4% of federal budget times 4.4T$/y). I'm going to go out on a limb and propose that the money may have helped, too.

twh270 7y ago
The money was necessary. But if it had been run like a typical government program, it would have been 25 years before we landed on the moon.
TrueDuality 7y ago
That is not how inflationary comparisons work with government budgets. The entire documented cost of the Apollo program[1] was $25.4 billion over 11 years. Adjusted for 2018 dollars that's $153 billion over 11 years, which works out to just about $14 billion per year. The total expenditure in the 2018 United States budget was $4.109 trillion[2] or %0.34 of yearly expenditures. Budgets do not follow inflationary trends even remotely, the 1961 expenditure[3] was $181.588 billion (wow that's pretty crazy). For the year that makes the Apollo program %1.2 of the federal expenditure. Another useful point of reference, the entire NASA organization in 2018 had an operating budget of $19.2 billion and this has to cover all of the mandated projects such as the SLS. They're also responsible for maintaining and monitoring a lot of infrastructure for other agencies (the weather service, DSN, etc) which wasn't the case during the Apollo mission. NASA itself is kind of left with scraps. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_federal_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_federal_bud... [3]: https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/spending_chart_1960_1970USb_20s2li011mcn_F0f https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/spending_chart_1960_1970USb_...
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  > That is not how inflationary comparisons work Right, but normalizing to the price of bread and milk is even more ridiculous than normalizing to the federal budget, which is not excellent for this purpose, as you point out. In any case, thanks for digging up more numbers. I stand by my claim that money (and enough assurance of continued money to bet everything on one large project) is key.
  - h3throw 7y ago
    > Right, but normalizing to the price of bread and milk is even more ridiculous than normalizing to the federal budget, which is not excellent for this purpose, as you point out. The CPI is composed of much more than that: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2016.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2016.pdf
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    > normalizing to the price of bread and milk is even more ridiculous than normalizing to the federal budget No it's not. Maybe normalize to the median income if you don't like bread and milk, but how much the government spends on education, health care, interest, military fleets, farm subsidies... that's not relevant to NASA's budget.

jonshariat 7y ago

Doesn't that help his point? They aimed to do it in just 10 years that was a very short deadline considering.

roymurdock 7y ago

We needed to beat the russians to the moon, it was part of the cold war effort, as much as I agree with these ideals they need to be tempered in reality and politics. We have no comparable political need for space exploration today.

robbiep 7y ago
Unless you’re concerned about us as a species not making it out of the local minima of the comfort of earth before an extinction level event wipes us out. Which, fair enough, most politicians aren’t.
- roymurdock 7y ago
  We are so, so far away from being able to leave earth and terraform/colonize other planets. A better argument is that we might find new technology or make new observations that help raise the standard of living on earth through designing to the requirements of space survival and exploration. But it's hard to translate potential ROI into spending when there are much more pressing problems here on earth.
  - nwah1 7y ago
    Not true. We've had sufficient technology for a long time. We've been sending robots to Mars for decades. We just haven't made it an objective to terraform Mars. We've even been quite cautious about avoiding even the possibility of transporting microbes there and "contaminating" it. But the basic mechanics of how to terraform are known. Elon Musk mentioned nuking the poles of Mars as an option. Changing the gas composition could be done, albeit slowly, with enough resources and motivation. You can send robots in advance of human settlers to prepare things. Self-replicating robots would be more ideal, and that is not a solved problem, but you could likely build partially self-replicating robots that are replenished with "vitamins" much like how the RepRap project does. Various NASA theorists have written about such things http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/ http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/