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Budget

NASA Will Reveal Moon 2024 Costs By April 15th

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 3, 2019

Chairwoman Johnson Opening Statement for NASA FY20 Budget Request Hearing
“Given the absence of an urgent crisis, it would be the height of irresponsibility for the Vice President of the United States to direct NASA to land astronauts on the Moon within the next five years without knowing what it will cost, how achievable the schedule is, and how it will impact NASA’s other programs. I expect you, Mr. Administrator, to provide the same information to this Committee today as I assume you provided to the White House on each of those questions in advance of the Vice President’s speech.”
Moon 2024 Gets Cool Reception By House Committee Democrats, SpacePolicyOnline
“As for the cost, Bridenstine said the Administration is working on an amendment to the budget request and hopes to submit it by April 15. April 15 is the date by which Congress is supposed to adopt each year’s Budget Resolution setting out the top-line numbers for how much money Congress can allocate for various purposes.”
Ranking Member Frank Lucas Opening Statement at Full Committee Hearing – A Review of the NASA FY2020 Budget Request
“NASA is getting the bucks, so now it’s time to deliver. Too often programs become complacent when funding is taken for granted. Congress and NASA need to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. We need to ensure these programs stay on schedule and within cost. Congress, along with the reconstituted National Space Council, led by Vice President Pence, provide this oversight.”

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

9 responses to “NASA Will Reveal Moon 2024 Costs By April 15th”

  1. TheBrett says:
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    Hopefully they’ll at least present it in annual cost form, and not the whole expected cost of the program (which always kills these things because Congress is like “30 billion more dollars for NASA?!! No!”).

  2. MAGA_Ken says:
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    FYI @NASA is going to come up with a budget in less than 2 weeks for a crash program they only started 1 week ago to land humans on the Moon 4 years earlier than planned by a program that is already years behind schedule & billions over budget? We’ve all seen this movie before.

    ———————

    Consider it a course correction to put the program back on schedule and original cost. SLS was supposed to have first flight in 2017. Then it was delayed to first flight in 2019. Then it was pushed to 2020 (which now is impossible to meet somehow).

    The first crewed flight was to be no later than April 2023 (at date set in 2015!).

    http://www.planetary.org/bl

  3. Michael Spencer says:
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    How is this even possible? There are a zillion architecture questions, at the very least?

    The tea leaves change so often NASA needs an entire office writing ‘Plans’ for any number of different projects, approaches, and architectures.

    …it would be the height of irresponsibility for [fill in the blank] .”

    Next time someone compares public and private sector, let this bulls**t be a reminder.

    • fcrary says:
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      You can do a budget estimate in a couple weeks. It would be very high level and very rough. I’d say you could expect one digit, which you shouldn’t believe, followed by the correct number of zeros. As in a few billion more per year, not $2.3 billion more per year.

      I’m in the middle of such an exercise at the moment. NASA wants to fund about a dozen concept studies for robotic missions, to inform the upcoming planetary decadal survey. They specifically want proposals to study missions costing more than a Discovery mission, and it’s pretty clear they wouldn’t be interested in a super-flagship mission (say anything over $3 billion.) So even before writing the proposal to ask for money to do a concept study, we’re tossing around ideas and guessing whether or not they’re to easy (could be done as a Discovery) or too ambitions (probably couldn’t be done for under $3 billion.) Calling that an estimate rather than a collective guess might be charitable. But that’s also the level of fidelity I’d expect from two week to work out the cost of putting astronauts on the Moon by 2024.

  4. ThomasLMatula says:
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    The Budget on a small postage stamp – $1 billion dollars for four astronauts to travel to the Lunar Surface.

    RFP: NASA will pay the sum of $1 billion dollars for four astronauts to be delivered to the Lunar surface at a location designated by NASA for a 1 week stay and then returned safely to Earth. The sum will be paid within 30 days of safe return to Earth.

    Then let industry fight it out.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Let’s call it Apollo 18!

      Cuz that is what it would be. Footprints. Then 50 years.

      • Donald Barker says:
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        Quite sad and disgusting to go down the path of destroying the future of space exploration.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          Yes, it is sad that the bad decisions made on NASA policy in the last 20 years destroyed a generation’s dreams. It is great that SpaceX and Blue Origins are restoring them. That is one of the strengths of the United States, when the government fails private industry always steps in to pick up the slack.

    • Roger Jones says:
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      Could definitely deliver four humans to the lunar surface for that budget; delivering them alive & returning them to Earth? Not so much.