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The syndrome impairing astronauts’ eyesight

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The syndrome impairing astronauts’ eyesight

#61

Post by [deleted] »

adrianN wrote: post #44
akiselev wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if SpaceX made the launch costs a hundred times cheaper than the shuttle, it would still cost over $500 million and that would only launch a tiny fraction of the mass needed for a full artifical gravity space station. The estimated cost of the International Space Station so far is over $100 billion not including launch costs so even if another company cut costs there by a factor of ten, thats $10 billion, again…

10 billion is about the same order of magnitude as an aircraft carrier. The US has ten.

[deleted]

Re: The syndrome impairing astronauts’ eyesight

#62

Post by akiselev »

adrianN wrote: post #44
akiselev wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if SpaceX made the launch costs a hundred times cheaper than the shuttle, it would still cost over $500 million and that would only launch a tiny fraction of the mass needed for a full artifical gravity space station. The estimated cost of the International Space Station so far is over $100 billion not including launch costs so even if another company cut costs there by a factor of ten, thats $10 billion, again…

10 billion is about the same order of magnitude as an aircraft carrier. The US has ten.

NASA's budget in 2015 was about $18 billion while the defense budget was just shy of $600 billion. If we lived in a fantasy world where NASA was considered as important as defense, we'd be an interplanetary species by now. Alas, we don't, and when we consider the feasibility of an idea we have to take that into account.
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