Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much is that in 2019 dollars?
About 166 billion, based off of CPI.
On the other hand, fixing it to 4.4% of the Federal Budget makes it $208.8 billion.
Blue Moon
171–180 of 236 posts
Re: Blue Moon
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
To put that number into perspective, the 2015 US Military budget was --4 trillion-- 600 billion dollars [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
Defense Budget (Billions) 637bn Total Budget (Trillions) 3.97tn I think you used the wrong number.
Defense budget is $800 bn now.
Re: Blue Moon
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unlike Elon Musk, Bezos has a tendency to set more accurate timelines. This is not to say that Space X’s achievements are not incredible. They are. It is just that Elon Musk projection timelines are pretty much always bunk, while Jeff Bezos seems to be better at projecting achievement timelines. Again, what Space X and Blue Origin have achieved are incredible, and yes Space X has an entirely different set of technolo…
But SpaceX still moves faster than Blue Origin, even though SpaceX promises to move much faster and then fails to do that.
How 'fast' they each move is beside the point.
However, a quick Googling suggests that Space X has ~3 times the number of employees Blue Origin has and may also have had more money ploughed into it.
The point here is that Elon Musk is infamous for his widely optimistic forecasts while Bezos is more down to Earth (so to speak).
Re: Blue Moon
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it's less capable than Apollo - we don't have anywhere near the lift capability of Saturn V anymore, and this program's budget is a rounding error in the $200B (inflation-adjusted) that went into Apollo. I think people underestimate just how insane the investment was in that program: in the neighborhood of 0.25% of GDP for a decade.
I think people underestimate the rocket equation. In the last fifty years very little progress has been made on the basic ratios between rocket fuel, size and payload. If you want to land on the moon, in 1960 or 2026, you are still going to need the same amounts of fuel and supplies. Your landers will by necessity be similar too.
The biggest changes will be in-orbit refueling and rapid reusability. That makes 100 tons to Mars orbit feasible.
Re: Blue Moon
#175I'm honestly underwhelmed. This is not more capability than Apollo (uncrewed variant of whose lander could land about 5 tons). A really high deck making egress difficult. Apparently expendable. Given Blue Origin's resources, they should be shooting far higher. There's a bunch of small companies pursuing expendable lunar landers of similar capabilities. I worry Blue Origin will just crowd them out. A reusable upper st…
This is their proposal that is in line with the 2024 manned return to the Moon. In the longer term I'm sure they have much more ambitious ideas.
Re: Blue Moon
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
But SpaceX still moves faster than Blue Origin, even though SpaceX promises to move much faster and then fails to do that.
They're going about it very different ways so I think from a typical bystander it is hard to see. We won't really know how accurate your statement is until we see New Glenn and if BFR ever becomes a reality. But historically BO has been right on the mark with their timelines while SpaceX (and a lot of other Musk stuff) is at least a year behind schedule.
By 2008, a publicized timetable for New Shepard indicated that Blue Origin intended to fly unmanned in 2011, and manned in 2012. How is that "right on the mark"?
Blue origin is 19 years old and hasn't achieved orbit.
Re: Blue Moon
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t that just another way of saying the ITER approach is infeasible? So it’s basically a jobs program
Compared to the world's energy costs, it's small potatoes. Fusion will be ready when the world needs it.
> Fusion will be ready when the world needs it.
50 years ago?
Re: Blue Moon
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bezos is suggesting he can do that in 5 years. It was “only” 12 years between Sputnik and Apollo 11. You’d think we’d be able to do things faster now.
> It was “only” 12 years between Sputnik and Apollo 11. 12 years, and 4.4% of the federal budget (in the peak). In 2007 dollars they spend around $136 billion to get to the moon.
That sounds like a huge amount of money, until you consider the Shuttle programme alone cost the taxpayer apporx $196 billion, inflation adjusted.
Re: Blue Moon
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but rocket launch costs are orders of magnitude higher than the cost of fuel to launch payloads. Once we nail down reusability, then we'll see space access become much more affordable. And once we have ships that only operate in space, we'll be able to carry much more fuel along (aerodynamics and structural strength are much less important).
The problem is that, no matter how cheap your fuel is, you have to build a launcher that can lift off while carrying all that fuel. It's expensive to make a pressure vessel that strong and light and large, engines that powerful, etc. If launch gets cheap enough given current launcher sizes, you can get into in-orbit assembly, but that requires immense investment into robotics or a lot of spending to support (machine-…
Please note that the ISS was assembled on orbit from many small components and subassemblies: the largest module was IIRC about 22 tonnes, while the ISS itself is around 420 tonnes. The Soviets pioneered this with Mir, and ISS was designed around a core that was originally intended to be Mir 2.0.
So we have quite a bit of experience assembling one big structure in orbit—a 25 year learning experience, basically, which has given us a toolbox of standards for docking adapters, compatible modules, external manipulators based on the Canadarm, and experience in on-orbit refueling and resupply.
Starship is big and (in theory) cheap, yes, but it's not obvious that we can't do this stuff with smaller and pricier tools.
Apollo didn't go for on-orbit assembly because they were in a blinding hurry (JFK set the "by the end of the decade" goal in 1961-ish) and it's taken us 25 years of plodding to get there. But we could do it now.
Re: Blue Moon
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think most people (myself included) do not understand how much technological improvement costs. Anecdote: I once had a conversation with a guy who worked at ITER, and he was pretty bullish (and he had no reason to bullshit me) on the prospect of fusion as a viable energy source, but frustrated with the internal politics of ITER. So I asked, "well, what would it take? If I could call up a bunch of rich people to get…
To put that number into perspective, the 2015 US Military budget was --4 trillion-- 600 billion dollars [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
Still. 2 years of military spending, in a peaceful world, for near-unlimited free power forever. Kind of puts it in perspective.