“I have been searching without success for an old MSFC technical report by Georg von Tiesenhausen outlining the von Braun team’s proposals for a post-Apollo space program. If I find it, I will come back to your question again as I think it included projected costs.”

http://beyondapollo.blogspot.com/2009/06/fifty-man-space-base-crew-1970.html

it also provides the nasa designation for the tech paper.

“but not our space program which actually created a lot more wealth than it consumed”

No, that’s a myth.

The government spending $116B dollars in today’s dollars on any task produces economic trickle-down, but not necessarily more wealth. For that to happen you have to be able to show that the expenditures produced MORE than the amount spent.

Did the Apollo program leave any lasting capabilities? No. The production lines were shut down, the non-reusable rockets and spacecraft were destroyed or put in museums, and the tooling was not directly applicable to any follow-on products.

The Apollo program left knowledge, and it paid for things that were used for other things, but there is no direct correlation that shows spending $116B on the Apollo program had anymore lasting effect than spending the same amount of money on something like building roads or other usable infrastructure.

In fact one could argue that spending $116B on military equipment for the Viet Nam war had the same effect as spending $116B on Apollo.

Apollo 20 was cacelled to allow Skylab to use it’s Saturn V.

Basically from about 1968 till the end of the program NASA was not buying new Saturn V’s or CM or LM. In fact 3 missions were canceled in 1970 and the rest delayed.

Other than for launch Skylab did not use the Saturn V. It’s missions flew on Saturn IB, which is cheaper to launch than the shuttle. The low busget of 11.5 billion does not occur till 1974. The last Saturn V launched in 1973.

“Marcel, you are worshiping the wrong thing if you want lunar bases. It isn’t how much can we lift in to orbit in one go, it is how much can we land and how much we can do there when we do.”

Actually, most of the cost for the Apollo program were for development cost. In fact, NASA’s highest annual budgets were from 1963 until 1968, before the lunar landings and Skylab program took place. During the lunar landings and the later Skylab space station program, NASA’s annual budget ranged from approximately $21 billion to as low as $11.4 billion in today’s dollars. During the years of the lunar missions, it ranged from $21 billion to as low as $15 billion annually. These numbers are pretty much in the range of current NASA spending. So its pretty much of a myth that the heavy lift vehicle based Apollo Moon program and Skylab space station program were unsustainable.

There were things in the Federal budget that were unsustainable during that period, like the titanically expensive Vietnam War– but not our space program which actually created a lot more wealth than it consumed.

Who is innovating, Mr. President?

Excellent posting. Well said.

Of course it could have- sans Vietnam.

To some people, 1 + 1 = 2 is “technobabble.”

Needless to say, such people aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

Not if you intend to be on the receiving end of that money.