Now, on to the lander… When was the last time we *successfully* landed a robot on rockets (That would be Viking, wouldn’t it? 30 years in the past by the time the lunar lander flies.)?? So, take a w.a.g. on the development cost for the landing stage, then add roughly one MER’s worth of rover development (minus the airbag engineering). Add a mid-size EELV. If we assume this launches in ’09, then I’ll give a pass on adding the science ops.

Finally, add in a wedge for initial development of the succeeding mission and perhaps a smaller one for preliminary design on the one after that.

When the dust settles I’d be very surprised if a set of reasonable guesses doesn’t end up in the $1.0 – 1.3 billion range. I don’t think anyone in NASA is pulling a fast one or gold-plating the budget (at least not blatantly or excessively). If you believe that the Gov’t should just put out a Request for Data (i.e., we’ll pay a bounty of $300 million for x,y, and z datasets if the data are returned by 1 Jan 2009), that’s a different argument altogether. I *think* that the bounty method should get the same data for under $1.0 billion, maybe a lot less, but that’s an experiment who’s time probably has not yet come in the current budgetary climate (can you say risk-aversion?).

– Eric.

Versus one that could carry both items to destination moon.

example:
If rocket A cost is 75 million and rocket B cost is 100 million then you would spend an additional 50 million for seperate launches not counting any difference for the payload Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor.

DUH, maybe they haven’t formulated all of their plans yet. Why not call Chris Scolese at 202-358-1413 or email him at cscolese@mail.hq.nasa.gov and demand to know all the details.

Harold: WRT ” Why not combine the missions seperating them just drives up the overall total cost of getting ready for manned mission to the moon.”

It is often far less expensive to build a dedicated orbiter and a dedicated lander than to build a spacecraft spilts into two parts – each doing a different function. It certainly makes for much smaller spacecraft and smaller launch vehicles. Why weren’t the Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor projects combined?

And one suspects that this is going to raise a lot of hackles on Capitol Hill, where there are already a lot of people wondering why missions to the moon cannot be done a) much cheaper than other missions, and b) done via different methods, such as private partnerships.

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/55862main_ok_house_hearing_transcript.pdf

(Turn to page 18 of the transcript.) Could this overall program cost $1.3 billion over five years? *Should* it cost $1.3 billion? Those are two very different questions…

Regarding choice of launch vehicles: while NASA has baselined a Delta 2 for LRO, there have been some whispers that LRO could be too large to fit on a Delta 2, forcing them to turn to a EELV. This might well be the case if NASA wants LRO to carry out multiple missions and last five years in orbit, at least part of which will be spent in a low lunar orbit that may require significant propellant to maintain.

Which, being generous and taking into account traditional budget timelines for such projects, will make around $800M for a lunar orbiter. Still hideously expensive, IMHO.