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What a pipe dream! It took the US -- which INVENTED aviation -- a Manhattan Project-sized effort to do it and, in 2002 dollars, approximately half a trillion dollars. The Chinese will not be landing on the Moon anytime in the the lifetime of any adult alive today.

42-"What a pipe dream! It took the US -- which INVENTED aviation -- a Manhattan Project-sized effort to do it and, in 2002 dollars, approximately half a trillion dollars. The Chinese will not be landing on the Moon anytime in the the lifetime of any adult alive today."

You got it right.

We have been screwing around with the wrong 'target' for NASA. The moon and mars, etc are all show and no go until we develop a decent method of propulsion.

Our focus should be on anti-gravity or some other sort of cost effective propulsion systems. It took a giant rocket, 550 feet tall and I forget how many thousands of tons, just to get the equivalent of a Mazda Miata (tiny sports car) on a one way ticket to the moon, and we couldn't even bring it back.

And today, each shuttle launch/mission costs approximately $500 million.

Until we (humans) develop a more cost efficient method of propulsion we will never be anything more than the equivalent of fleas hopping up and down and on and off our dog (earth). The expense is just too great.

The Chinese will not be landing on the Moon anytime in the the lifetime of any adult alive today.

Similar things were said regarding the Soviets and the nuclear bomb. While getting to the moon and back is rocket science, it's well documented rocket science and will be easier to do a second time.

"What a pipe dream! It took the US -- which INVENTED aviation -- a Manhattan Project-sized effort to do it and, in 2002 dollars, approximately half a trillion dollars. The Chinese will not be landing on the Moon anytime in the the lifetime of any adult alive today."

The cost of the Apollo project, in "then-year" dollars, was approximately $27 billion. For reference, Eisenhower's national highway system cost $100 billion.

Assuming a six-percent rate of inflation since 1969, The cost today would be about $184 billion. At 3% inflation, it would be $71 billon. This does not consider the immense advances in technology which would permit it to be done more cheaply. On the other hand it does not consider that most of the infrastructure (supplier base, etc.) have vanished because they were starved to death by the end of Apollo. So I'm calling it a push.

Anyhow, "half a trillion dollars" is an idiotic statement.

--Boris