Your Apollo budget numbers prove my point. NASA’s FY 2010 budget is only $18.7 billion. We could wipe out everything that NASA does today — ISS, transport to/from ISS, exploration technology, aeronautics technology, science, civil servant salaries, etc. — and we’d still be hundreds of millions to billions of dollars short of affording Saturn V-based lunar landings or their HLV-based equivalent today within NASA’s budget.

“There were things back in the late 60′s and early 70′s that were clearly not affordable like the Vietnam War. But NASA’s heavy lift program was not one of them!”

If Apollo was affordable, then it wouldn’t have been cancelled.

“The Apollo program was a great success and a space station/Moon base program using Apollo hardware would have been even more affordable and successful.”

Apollo was successful at beating the Soviets in a Cold War demonstration of U.S. technical, especially aerospace and missile, prowess. It was not successful at establishing an affordable, sustainable means of expanding human frontiers in space (nor was it designed for such). If Apollo had been successful at the latter, then Apollo wouldn’t have been terminated.

FWIW…

Apollo was successful at getting canceled and creating a bureaucratic zombie that is still eating the brains of the nation today.

Agreed. And interestingly von Braun wanted to build an intermediate vehicle first. If only people had listened to this man.

(reply) Why didn’t it RLLC? That’s a crucial question. Any thoughts on that?

Because RLLC was an economic fantasy to justify the funding in the first place. The fact that it never had any basis in economic reality didn’t do any harm to the NASA contractors and bureaucrats who made billions of dollars.

Just as the vaunted microgravity industry we are supposed to have gotten out of ISS was techno-economic gibberish — even some of the microgravity scientists NASA was funding told us so against their interests. But the economic fantasy served to sell politicians again spending 100% other peoples’ money.

Without a real market of private customers sufficient to cover the R&D as well as the operational costs, but instead glory-seeking governments or philanthropists pretending to be investors covering the costs, there is little or no economic incentives for the sellers of the project to either (a) tell anything remotely resembling the truth about costs in the first place, or (b) actually try very hard to reduce costs once one gets the money. So the projectors make up a bunch of absolutely wonderful sci-fi daydreams to convince a bunch of space fans and politicians to spend somebody else’s money on it. It’s a great scam that has been going on for decades and is still running strong. Although the distraction of just doing the obviously instead of nonobviously frivolous (i.e. “Exploration” a la Constellation or Plymouth Rock) has crimped the style of the RLLC scammers as will probable upcoming budget cuts.

That said, there is admittedly still some prospect of SpaceX producing a much more modest, but still impressive, reduction in launch costs if they extract themselves from this scam cycle and keep moving to actual private markets.

Get a clue, yes, they do support me. Satellites were invented (key word is invented) long before the US and USSR built and flew them.

I don’t hate the gov’t, I actually work for it and I understand its role and it is not as you see it.

Ah, the idiotic argumentum ab Somaliam.

Why am I not surprised?

“Ah, the old sci-fi standbys.

These have been coming Real Soon Now for at least five decades. Sure, let’s bring back the old propaganda about solar power satellites and O’Neill Colonies that helped sell the Shuttle, which was supposed to Radically Lower Launch Costs and help bring us to such glorious futures. Let’s recycle all the old heavenly visions to keep funding a vast army of bureaucrats who are supposed to magically reduce launch costs because they are building a Bigger Rocket Than Yours. Why invent new sci-fi frauds when you can take advantage of the short memories of young and gullible space fans by recycling the old ones?

If you insist on spinning fantastic fiction at least try to bring a modicum of creativity and originality to the task. Sheesh.”

Humans are very smart creatures. Just 12 years after the launching of the first satellite, people were walking on the surface of the Moon.

The 21st century is going to be the century of space and humans will probably be living permanently on the surface of the Moon and Mars well before mid-century, IMO. But technological progress has always had cynics like yourself and probably always will.

“The Soviet Union and US governments did not fund and launch the first satellites into orbit? ”

“That does not mean they invented them. Get a clue Williams”

Sorry that the historical facts don’t support your conclusions. But without governments and the tax payers that fund governments, there would be no satellites and no private satellite industry today. That’s just the facts!

But if you hate government so much, there are libertarian paradises like Somalia where you could go:-)

“Somehow, I think, you’re trying to impress us with all the advancements government investment in space have brought us..”

I’m not trying to impress anyone. I’m just making a historical fact.