Since you don’t need the complexity of a NASA set up you could probably contract a down-and-dirty system from Burt Rutan. Instead of flinging everything up at once you could launch a fuel system, then a landing module, and finally a return capsule. The landing module could be a combination balloon/rocket system like the Mars probes with more emphasis on a rocket speed brake. You could probably fund much of it by selling moon rocks upon return. If you can bring back a gulf club that would be pretty cool.
Yes, I’d be on top of the world at local golf ground then. “Just watch this swing Lou, it’s gonna be out of this world.”
Ok, so you say 1 bn might not be enough. Damn. Back to saving plan, then.
How much testing you do depends on the level of risk you are willing to accept, but in general across the aerospace industry the amount of testing, particularly environments testing (thermal cycle, EM and ionizing radiation, shock, random and spectrum vibe, et cetera) has substantially increased since the Apollo days. Assuming that you are starting with a clean sheet design, at minimum you’ll have to do component, subsystem, and system level testing for all new components and systems that have not been previously qualified to maximum expected levels. This will likely cost several times the fabrication cost of the actual vehicle, but is imperative to be assured that you have, in fact, predicted all of the loads, coupled behavior, and resulting phenomena that the vehicle may see in flight. Failure to do this–as done early in the development of launch vehicle systems–gives a high probability of vehicle failure.
Many people have the idea that an engineering package is all “blueprints”, i.e. a comprehensive collection of engineering detail drawings and notes. In fact, much of the engineering data required to fabricate and integrate a vehicle are found in specifications, interface control drawings, supplier documentation, material lists, et cetera spread across the breadth of suppliers, subcontractors, integrators, et cetera, of which NASA likely never had more than the high level documentation. It isn’t as if NASA ever had all the information needed to reproduce the Saturn V from a box of bolts and a pallet of sheet metal, and even if they did there are many proprietary systems and processes which can’t be readily reproduced as expert techs have died and suppliers have gone out of business. And of course nearly all the tooling for the Saturn V was scrapped or destroyed outright. It would likely cost more to attempt to reproduce the Saturn family of rockets than it would to start from a clean sheet.
First of all, the Earth Orbit Rendezvous you describe is actually more complicated and adds substantially more risk than the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous used by the Apollo program. The only thing this saves you is that you can build a smaller launch vehicle with less throw weight; however, it means you also have to schedule and support several coordinated launches within the operational window of a few days, which anyone involved in the space launch business can tell you is very difficult.
Second, you can’t use any kind of aerobraking for a Lunar landing, as the Moon has essentially no atmosphere. And a human being cannot withstand the kinds of environments experienced during a “soft crash” landing used by the Mars Pathfinder, or at least, not safely and comfortably, nor without risk of damaging the integrity of a necessarily thin environmental pressure shell. Rocket-propelled soft-landing is the only viable landing mode onto the Moon’s surface.
Third, I know that Burt Rutan is the hero of the amateur space enthusiast crowd, but you also need to realize that he hasn’t done anything as sophisticated as even putting a satellite in orbit, much less a human being on the surface of the Moon, he’s taken some pretty significant risks and suffered some dramatic near failures, and that while many people like to moan about “the blizzard of paperwork” required to launch a conventional space launch vehicle, the fact is that nearly every single piece of paper and every iota of data that is recorded is due to a lesson learned from some previous failure or near-failure. I would be the first to acknowledge that NASA, of all organizations, has an obstructive bureaucracy and more documentation that it strictly needs, but there is still a lot of data that has to be recorded, collated, reviewed, and archived to ensure that all reasonable steps to reduce risk to the mission have been taking. Failure to do this can be seen in every rocket that has fallen out of the sky because someone neglected to consider the effects of stress corrosion cracking or used the wrong units conversion factor.
As for the o.p., a billion bucks ain’t nearly enough for this effort; heck, Lockheed Martin blew nearly a billion dollars on the X-33 without ever flying a single piece of hardware before the program was cancelled. First, you’ll have to build yourself a first class engineering group and test & integration facility. Second, you’ll have to buy all the materials–many of them exotic–to fabricate your vehicle. You’ll have to invest in years of R&D to get the barely adequate safety margins that conventional materials will allow you to construct, and then you’ll have to get permission from some government to fly your crazy contraption out into space. You might want to retain a few of the still-living astronauts who have actually been on the Moon’s surface, or at least read extensively through the many reports that describe the difficulty of doing even the most simple tasks on the Moon.
Or you can just get some bootleg copies of this show, sit back on the couch with a beer, and use your imagination. Or you can wait until the Chinese get all the bugs worked out of their Russian-derived hardware and start selling tickets for US$15 round trip. Either of these is vastly more likely to be successful.
Stranger
No way.
[Roy Scheider’s voice] “You’re going to need a bigger bankroll.” [/RSv]
Rutan is an awesome guy and a real general aviation hero but he’s never managed to get a craft into orbit. Up high and back down - yep. Orbit no.
Even spaceship 2 is “only” shooting for sub orbital flight and that’s with funding from Richard Branson, and some guy from Dubia. Heck if they can get the damn thing to launch satellites like they say they plan too I’ll be impressed.
If you’re going to plunk down the cash for the moon trip, I strongly recommend that you not pinch pennies. Spend a couple extra bucks and order the optional Lunar Rover. Even in 1/6th gravity, it’s hard work walking around in that suit, and the Rover extends your range by miles.
No, no, no, no. C’mon, guys, you’re going about this all wrong. Sink $950 million into teleporter research; hold back $50 million for the spacesuit, shelter, rover, camera, golf clubs, etc.
Definitely 1960s dollars. AIUI, the $25b frequently quoted was the sum of NASA’s space budgets from its beginning through 1969. To allow for inflation since then, you would nominally multiply by about 7 to get $175b. I’m not sure if that would be a reasonable amount to reproduce a moon landing, but I suspect it’s a bit low.
BTW, during a typical year of the 60s, the welfare budget of the US was about 3 times that 25b figure. All the people who kept saying things like “we can put a man on the moon, but we can’t eliminate poverty” (and there were lots of people who said stuff like that) seemed to be unaware of these figures.
Could we do the moon part cheaper if we just dopped a guy in one of those balloon things like they used for the Mars rover? Then send him back to the orbiter with a jetpack rather than a whole space ship.
Psst, see post #23, fourth non-quoted paragraph.
One of the Artemis project proposals included a landing & ascent module that was open to space. The suited astronauts had seats/acceleration couches, though.
*** Ponder
To be fair though, that wasnt the cost of “just going to the moon”
That was learning to build rockets, build big ass rockets, run 3 seperate programs, put men in space (much less on the moon), develop much of the theory and technologly behind such endeavors, small computers, teflon, tang, you name it…
That number really represents a reasonable upper bound for some decently developed country thats never been in space, wants to do most of it “themselves” and decides to go to the moon.
Using todays technology and know how, its gonna be a lot cheaper than that. Down to a cool billion? Well, read the other posts.
Personally, I still think you could squeek by…
And after that yo han go, I’ll bet you want to
play among the stars & see what Spring is like on Jupiter & Mars
Sing it Frank 