However that130 billion dollars was spent in a very short amount of time compared to both the ISS and the shuttle. In short Apollo was more expensive than both the shuttle and ISS. It is like comparing a $15,000 vacation where you need all of the cash NOW to a five year car note. One is going to be harder to afford than the other and one is going to be a lot more disruptive of the budget than the other. I can use the car while paying the note. I can’t use the vacation while saving(or paying) for it and it does not help me in anyway(like say getting a better job further away).

This has to be one of the dumbest statements ever on this forum.

Making up 10km/s of dV is just a question of propellant. And compared to the costs of building launch vehicles, and certainly compared to the costs of establishing and supplying a “lunar colony”, propellant costs are small fractions of a penny on the dollar.

For example, the cost of liquid hydrogen is about $1 per pound or about $0.45 per kilogram. A single-core Delta IV requires about 200,000kg of LOX/LH2 propellant. Even assuming all that propellant was LH2 (LOX is about one-fifth cheaper), it costs less than $91,000 to fuel a Delta IV. That’s 0.006% of the ~$140M cost of a Delta IV. It’s going to be even less when the cost of the satellite is included.

So even if the Moon had no gravity _and_ no propellant was required to move from the Moon’s surface to GEO _and_ even if all the lunar infrastructure was already in place and paid for to build launchers and satellites on the Moon by some lunar tinkerbell fairy, launching comsats from the surface of the Moon won’t even save one-hundredth of one percent of the cost of launching from Earth.

No one is going to spend hundreds of millions to trillions of dollars on a lunar colony to save one-hundredth of one percent of anything. It’s economic stupidity of gargantuan proportions.

“1. I’m surprised you think hundreds of thousands of people can’t get to the Moon since you seem to think that Elon can transfer people into space for a dime:-)”

If SpaceX launched seven passengers daily it would take 78 years to get a couple hundred thousand on the moon.

“2. Most jobs on the Moon will probably be on Earth with machines teleoperated by humans on Earth– maybe from their bedrooms. There are more than 7 billion people on the surface of the Earth that could potentially operate such machines. So there are no shortages of employees”

There we have some agreement. I do not picture big heavy machines operating at first on Luna. More like swarms of micromachines teleoperated. If one fails they can be cheap enough to let die in place for later robotic pickup and repaired indoors by human hands.

I honestly do not see a person needing a PHD to use a joystick to run a microrobot excavator/dumptruck.

“4. There’s no way terrestrial launch companies could compete against a lunar colony. The delta-v requirements for a reusable vehicle to deploy a satellite at GEO from the lunar surface is approximately 3.92km/s while the delta-v requirement from Earth to GEO for an expendable space craft is more than 13 to 14 km/s.”

Yes there is, they could use reusable vehicles to launch the sats from Earth. Tons of the terrestrial infrastructure is paid for or the amortization costs are so low now they are not a huge factor of price. The first launch of a sat from luna would have to amortize literally billions.

Will it happen in the future? More than likely. In the near term? Not so much. The price of entry to the market from the two locations are so skewed towards earth makes it a no brainer.

How is a $3 billion a year SLS/MPCV development program unaffordable when Obama inherited an $8.4 billion a year man space flight related budget in 2009 ($3 billion for the Shuttle, $2 billion for the ISS, and $3.4 billion for the Constellation program). Both the Constellation program and the shuttle program are gone, yet the SLS/MPCV is only being funded at $3 billion a year. And Obama is trying to lower that even more! The idea that the SLS is financially crippling NASA’s beyond LEO efforts doesn’t reflect reality!

Marcel F. Williams

The Apollo program which gave us lunar landings plus a space station (Skylab) cost less than $130 billion in today’s dollars (per Obama’s Augustine Commission). So the answer is clearly, Yes!

Marcel F. Williams

Well right wing extremist like yourself usually have trouble with economics in the first place: you guys have a great history of causing great depressions and great recessions.

1. I’m surprised you think hundreds of thousands of people can’t get to the Moon since you seem to think that Elon can transfer people into space for a dime:-)

2. Most jobs on the Moon will probably be on Earth with machines teleoperated by humans on Earth– maybe from their bedrooms. There are more than 7 billion people on the surface of the Earth that could potentially operate such machines. So there are no shortages of employees:-)

3. A lot can happen in 40 years (40 years ago, America’s Moon program ended). If an outpost is established on the lunar surface in 2022 then 40 years later (2064) there could well be hundreds of thousands of people on the lunar surface. If you doubt that then you don’t know much about the history of progress and migration in America and the world.

4. There’s no way terrestrial launch companies could compete against a lunar colony. The delta-v requirements for a reusable vehicle to deploy a satellite at GEO from the lunar surface is approximately 3.92km/s while the delta-v requirement from Earth to GEO for an expendable space craft is more than 13 to 14 km/s.

You need to learn some physics Coastal Ron:-)

Marcel F. Williams

Exploiting LEO and GEO for telecommunications doesn’t create wealth? You must be joking! Space has been creating wealth for several decades now. CNN, HBO, even FOX wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for satellites. And most athletes would still have to get part time jobs during the off season:-)

Marcel F. Williams