The Constellation program had a $3.4 billion dollar a year budget in 2009. With no $3 billion a year Space Shuttle program, that would give NASA $6.4 billion a year. That's $64 billion in funding over a decade, plenty of funds for an HLV, CEV, Service Module, and even a lunar module.
Quote from: hydra9 on 11/09/2010 09:31 amThe Constellation program had a $3.4 billion dollar a year budget in 2009. With no $3 billion a year Space Shuttle program, that would give NASA $6.4 billion a year. That's $64 billion in funding over a decade, plenty of funds for an HLV, CEV, Service Module, and even a lunar module. Wrong. The money funds other things than the manned vehicles.
Quote from: Jim on 11/09/2010 01:44 pmQuote from: hydra9 on 11/09/2010 09:31 amThe Constellation program had a $3.4 billion dollar a year budget in 2009. With no $3 billion a year Space Shuttle program, that would give NASA $6.4 billion a year. That's $64 billion in funding over a decade, plenty of funds for an HLV, CEV, Service Module, and even a lunar module. Wrong. The money funds other things than the manned vehicles. Including the cost of keeping the various operational groups on life-support while the development is done, and paying the fixed costs of keeping the operational team together once the development is done, but before ops start....~Jon
Including the cost of keeping the various operational groups on life-support while the development is done, and paying the fixed costs of keeping the operational team together once the development is done, but before ops start....
* Constellation required funding that never materialized* The Augustine commission stated that another $3B per year is required to enable exploration* The president's 2011 budget request called for the first beyond LEO mission in 2025* HEFT1 included 1 high Earth orbit, 1 Lagrange and 1 asteroid mission over 20 years (not particularly inspiring) while exceeding their budget by an average of $750m per year.My question is: Are there any credible sources (NASA studies, corporate sponsored studies, other) indicating that inspiring exploration can be accomplished within currently anticipated budgets. If so, can any of these proposed "affordable" exploration paths survive reductions in NASA's top level budget?
I don't think I'm being testy.
So an ops team will have to be ramped up, trained, etc as design is winding down so that ops can begin.
Quote from: OV-106 on 11/09/2010 04:05 pmI don't think I'm being testy.The word "despise" has to do with the word "testy". Moving on:
Just curious - have you been tracking the cost reductions in ops over, say, the past 10 years? I can't speak for anyone else but MOD has been working three programs (Shuttle, ISS and CxP development, plus various other support roles) for what it cost just for shuttle 20 years ago.
Quote from: OpsAnalyst on 11/11/2010 04:36 pmJust curious - have you been tracking the cost reductions in ops over, say, the past 10 years? I can't speak for anyone else but MOD has been working three programs (Shuttle, ISS and CxP development, plus various other support roles) for what it cost just for shuttle 20 years ago.Two of those programs, Constellation and Shuttle are almost shut down. They should be spending less money than they did 20 years ago.
I guess that does give an idea of how much discussion goes on here without real factual proof (in all fairness, it's kinda hard for us non-space professionals to do the research to have truely educated opinions in this respect).