This crossed my mind the other day… What do you think it would cost to send another Apollo-like mission to the Moon?
I mean, say that NASA ran short on payroll right before the weekend and all the pawnshops were already closed. And Bill Gates shows up and says “I’ll pay for the next mission, but I have to go too.”
From what I’ve read, the Apollo missions ran between $20 and $40 billion, but that was material and hardware for some 20 missions, (meaning 20 Saturn V’s, 20 LEMs, 20 command modules, etc) plus a healthy chunk went to research. This time, we already have things like spacesuits, control computers are smaller, lighter and more accurate, liftoff engines are more powerful and more efficient, plus we already have the empirical data from the old missions.
So, NASA tools up and builds one complete Saturn V rocket (with beter fuels, better engines, better metallurgy) complete with command module, lunar module, lander, moon buggy, etc.
How much would it cost?
They have the blueprints, they have the data, they know how to plot the flightpath. Spacesuits are now off-the-rack.
But salaries are higher, the dollar is lower in value compared to a '60s buck, and perhaps most importantly, there’s a pile more bureaucracy and paperwork to clear, and so on and so on.
Could we do it for $1 billion? $5B? $10B?
And as a secondary topic, what could such a mission do? Yes, the obvious one is “look for the previous mission’s stuff” to slap hoaxers silly with, but hey, that’s not worth a couple of billion. 