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One thing that is too common in these aerospace related budget estimates is that they go up. I am trying not to be pessimistic, but I have a feeling that their
by nhoss2 15y ago
One thing that is too common in these aerospace related budget estimates is that they go up. I am trying not to be pessimistic, but I have a feeling that their launch costs might go up a little bit. Even if it does it, their prices would still be groundbreaking nonetheless. I bought Dr. Zubrin's book on mars direct (its great!) and lets say that somehow the cost to send three spacecraft with the capability to come back (including development costs) is $10 billion (which I am pretty sure is a super under estimate but the spacex way might say otherwise). To put that into perspective google could have funded a full fledged manned mars mission and still save $2 billion to spare by not buying motorola...
But this is definitely possible even with nasa's reduced budget now that the shuttle is retired.
- mkr-hn 15y agoI doubt NASA will get to keep the money they were using for the shuttle given the austerity-crazed culture that's overtaken Congress.
- onedognight 15y agoAusterity? They planned to reduce the deficit by 10% in ten years and only 1% next year. Call me when they touch the debt. As it is they are still spending extravagantly.
- mkr-hn 15y agoCan we not get into that here? It always degrades into a political slugfest, and it's worse on HN because too many believe they're above politics.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoYou raised the subject, now you're just being rude.
- mkr-hn 15y agoI didn't say anything about the debt ceiling deal. edit: Pointing out that NASA is not likely to keep the funding is not the same as bringing up politics. Pointing out the likely factions responsible for it would be bringing up politics, but I didn't. Because it would be better suited for a whole new submission, not a long tree here.
- tsotha 15y agoNASA will keep the money. If NASA was actually a space program you'd probably be right. But it's not - it's a jobs program. Did you ever wonder why "mission control" is in Houston instead of the cape, or why SRBs, which could have been much safer transported by ship, were built in land-locked Utah?