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Congress

Constellation on Steroids: What NASA Thinks Congress' Architecture Might Cost

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
September 6, 2011
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White House Experiences Sticker Shock Over NASA’s Plans, WS Journal
“An Aug. 19 budget analysis prepared by NASA managers, a copy of which was obtained by The Wall Street Journal, illustrates the sticker shock associated with NASA’s drive to push U.S. manned flights beyond the orbiting international space station. … Based on priorities already adopted by Congress–then adjusting for projected inflation and accelerated development efforts–the document indicates it could cost as much as $57 billion to deploy and use the proposed systems through 2025. Upgrading launch facilities and building additional spacecraft to allow astronauts to land on the moon or an asteroid, the document indicates, could boost the total to $62.5 billion None of the scenarios envision manned flight on the new rocket before the end of 2017.”
Keith’s Note: Numbers like this are not supposed to get out – so the White House, NASA, and everyone else in that closed loop can’t be happy about this. Now that Congress has to confront the public reality of what NASA says their SLS-based architecture will cost, food fights are certain to follow.
This is just Constellation on Steroids – without all that back to the Moon stuff. I wonder what the new (higher) number would be if the costs of actually developing payloads and then supporting them across a serious, multi-year program of exploration were included? I would imagine that the end costs would not be much different than Constellation (except higher, of course) – and that the money to support such a program would be as equally an unrealistic fantasy as were the promised funds for Constellation.
I wonder what it would cost if NASA just posted an exploration plan and had the private sector bid on implementing it? Do we really need to build a new mega-rocket when existing or evolvable commercial rockets could launch smaller chunks in cheaper launch vehicles?
Keith’s additional Note: WSJ has an odd for-pay firewall. In order to read this article, go to Google and paste “White House Experiences Sticker Shock Over NASA’s Plans” into the search window. You can read the article but the link that is generated won’t work for anyone else.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.