One of the key criticisms of the (unofficial) new Bush space initiative is its cost: a number of reports, including some quotes by Democratic candidates, have pegged the cost of the mission at up to $1 trillion. The source of the $1 trillion seems unclear (Gregg Easterbrook, political and sports writer and amateur space analyst, provided some rationale for the $1 trillion figure, but the problem is that he forgets that the original SEI plan included both Moon and Mars missions, not just a Mars mission.)
Now criticism is coming, oddly enough, from the other direction. Monday’s New Dem Daily included a piece about the proposed new initiative. It quoted a USA Today article that noted that duplicating Apollo would cost $150-175 billion, but the President is expected to include only $800M more in NASA’s FY05 budget. The column’s conclusion: “…the shoot-the-moon announcement illustrated another maddeningly familiar aspect of the Bush administration’s policy initiatives: a habit of establishing big, showy goals but then refusing to make the investments necessary to make them possible.” What, you expected Bush to budget the full amount in the first year?
One point to mull over while contimplating cost figures, be they $800M or $1T. According to early reports, the President plans on asking that Congress increase NASA’s budget by 5% through FY09 (the last budget of a hypothetical Bush 2nd term.) This means that NASA’s FY09 budget will be almost $20B (using 2004 dollars), with a total funding wedge of a little over $12B from FY05 to FY09 over and above NASA’s current $15.5B budget. What can $12B buy you? According to a SpaceRef article from back in October, NASA was estimating that the cost of developing the CRV-only version of the Orbital Space Plane would be about… $11-12B. Given that the OSP CRV was supposed to be ready by the end of 2008 anyway (a plan now uncertain), NASA would have needed a significant budget increase anyway to pay for its development regardless of any new policy initiative.
