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Put me in the No Way! column. NASA budget for exploration including SLS is about $3.5 billion. The Apollo mission cost $145 billion. Just not going to happen.
by netman21 7y ago
Put me in the No Way! column. NASA budget for exploration including SLS is about $3.5 billion. The Apollo mission cost $145 billion. Just not going to happen. Best guess: double budget to $7 billion and spend that much every year for 20 years and we will be back on the Moon.
- bernardopires 7y agoYou mean the entire Apollo program cost $145 billion. This is one mission to the moon with much better technology and lower costs. You just can not compare costs like this.
- thombat 7y agoAccording to the per-year costing in [0], about 80% of the entire Apollo program cost was accrued before the first moon landing. That suggests that even just one mission will come with a substantial price ticket, even if no hardware is built for subsequent missions. [0] https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3737/1 https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3737/1
- avmich 7y agoYes, but analogous 80% of the entire Artemis cost are also already spent and the results are there. Engines, launchers, spacecrafts (Apollo analog maiden LEO flight is expected this spring), electronics, power, communications...
- thombat 7y agoSince the lander and gateway are yet to be built let alone tested (at least Wikipedia still has them as a "concept") it seems too soon to say what the final cost will be. By way of comparison the first full Apollo stack flight was 20 months before Apollo 11, which puts it close to the 60%-spend point, and that was some five years after the LM contract was placed.