NASA’s $93B Artemis Moon Project Price Tag Is ‘Unsustainable’

Real Clear Policy ^ | September 21, 2022 | Adam Andrzejewski

[Reno89519]

While average Americans are excited the United States is planning to send people back to the moon through NASA’s Artemis project, the space agency’s inspector general said the cost is “unsustainable,” Fox News reported.

NASA Inspector General Paul K. Martin predicted that the first four missions will cost $4.1 billion each and told Congress that price "strikes us as unsustainable."

He projected that by 2025, NASA will have spent $93 billion on the Artemis lunar program.

The price tag is far more than the space agency’s lunar program was projected to cost a decade ago, CNBC reported.

In 2012, NASA officials estimated each mission would cost about $500 million, with the first rocket shooting off in 2017.

Now, the cost has increased eightfold, according to the NASA auditor.

Artemis I was originally scheduled to take off the last week of August but weather and hardware concerns postponed the launch.

NASA engineers had been unable to get the engines to the proper temperature range required to start them at liftoff, Fox News reported.

Launch controllers also had to deal with storms in the area that delayed propellant loading operations, as well as “a leak at the quick disconnect on the 8-inch line used to fill and drain core stage liquid hydrogen and a hydrogen leak from a valve used to vent the propellant from the core stage intertank,” Fox News reported.

[Reno89519]

As usual, NASA and its contractors have over-engineered this into a financial and technical disaster. Maybe they could hire a team of Russian engineers to simplify and harden this so it becomes feasible and can be accomplished?

[Alas Babylon!]

Just contract out to Bezos, Branson or Musk. Give contract to lowest bidder.

[Neverlift]

So if my cell phone has more computing power than the Apollo moon shot, you would think they could do this on the cheap.

[dragnet2]

We were just talking about things being, “Over engineered”. Look at a new Jeep. It’s basically computerized with probably 5000 feet of wiring in it with so much nonsense added on it’s laughable. And it’s just a Jeep!

[JoSixChip]

Musk will do it for 1 tenth the price. But I don’t think he offers the same kick backs that Bowing and Lookeed Martin do.

[marktwain]

Maybe they could hire a team of Russian engineers to simplify and harden this so it becomes feasible and can be accomplished?

Just hire Elon Musk, and give him a bonus of half of every billion he saves off the projected cost.

[neverevergiveup]

But we have enough money for each and every pet cause, project, and war the establishment wants to fund.

I will fight until I can’t fight anymore, but if this is the path the US ultimately follows I will most certainly be an expat unless I die first.

[hopespringseternal]

I think the entire Apollo program was something like $20 billion and they started from scratch.

Of course we spend that amount on welfare payments alone every ninety days.

As obscene as the pricetag of the Artemis program is, it is nothing compared to the entitlement state.

[Reily]

Bowing???
Don’t you mean Boeing?

[dragnet2]

How did you ever guess?

[BobL]

“NASA’s $93B Artemis Moon Project Price Tag Is ‘Unsustainable’”

Take that, China !!!! (and Russia).

[Falcon4.0]

Agreed.
But even without the kick backs, NASA and Boeing have no incentive to do it cheaper.

[Yossarian]

Maybe they could hire a team of Russian engineers to simplify and harden this so it becomes feasible and can be accomplished?

Good Lord - the only thing that Russian engineers have done lately in space is deliver ISS modules that are so defective that they put the whole station at risk.

NASA incompetent engineers > Russian incompetent engineers.

[Falcon4.0]

Musk is single hand-idly building the space travel equivalent of the “Trans-Continental Railroad”.

[Travis McGee]

Can they fill Artemis with fuel without it leaking like a sieve, portending disaster?

For the record, from a boomer who watched it all from Gemini on, NASA put Saturn Vs up (with living astronauts on top) in the 1960s, and sent them to the moon.

Using less computing power than is in your coffee maker. Mostly using slide rules. This was more than half a century ago.

In 1973, we were all sure we'd be on Mars by 2001. Like the book and movie by A.C. Clarke. We were sure of this. This was the trajectory of America, seen from the early 1970s. JFK said, "Let's go to the moon," and we did.

SO WHAT CHANGED?"

Just scratching my head.

[Ezekiel]

93 billion? For a Moon project?

Outrageous. It’s only 93 *million* to get to the Sun.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Average Americans are not "excited" to see their money blasted into space, never to be seen again …

[SmokingJoe]

Just drop Artemis and use SpaceX Super Heavy and Starship, which are much more powerful and vastly cheaper.

[Reno89519]

And that room today would be filled with every variation of woke possible and zero-percent of the brainpower delivered years ago.

[Outflow]

It’s about the only positive thing going on. Same as the late 60s with Apollo.