The Moon’s $100+ Billion Price Tag

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Here’s the latest on our return to the moon:

The rocket and capsule that NASA is proposing to return astronauts to the moon would fly just twice in the next 10 years and cost as much as $38 billion, according to internal NASA documents obtained by the Orlando Sentinel….That timeline and price tag could pose serious problems for supporters of the new spacecraft, which is being built from recycled parts of the shuttle and the now-defunct Constellation moon program. It effectively means that it will take the U.S. manned-space program more than 50 years — if ever — to duplicate its 1969 landing on the moon.

That is certain to infuriate NASA supporters in Congress….blah blah blah.

Well, hell, is this really a shocker? There are reasons to think that a moon program today should cost less than the original: we know a lot more about building rockets, we have better design technology, we have far better computers and access to lighter-weight components, and so forth. Still, that only provides a modest benefit, and in the end you still have to put together a massive program to build a brand new space vehicle pretty much from scratch. CBO estimated years ago that the Apollo program cost $100 billion in current dollars just for the R&D and management alone, and another $70 billion to build the dozen or so launchers and lunar modules. Given that, why should anyone be surprised that $38 billion is a shoestring budget that will barely fund two flyby missions?

The truth is that a new moon program will probably cost something on the order of $100 billion or more. Personally, I don’t think it’s a good use of money, but your mileage may vary on that score. Whatever you happen to think of it, though, that’s how much you need to count on spending if you want a real program. There’s no point in continually being shocked when it turns out that NASA can’t really do much of anything for less than half of what it actually needs.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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