Why The Moon Now?

The New Republic Online: Easterbrook -- What NASA needs right now is not an absurd, bank-breaking grand mission: It needs to spend a decade researching a safer lower-cost alternative to the space shuttle.

And why might George W. Bush endorse a Moon base or Mars mission? Either he's a science illiterate surrounded by advisors who are science illiterates, or it's a blank check for aerospace contractors.

el - While I am not in total agreement with this I think it is correct in terms of
costs, meaning and why.

What would astronauts at a Moon base do? I haven't the foggiest notion. Note
that NASA has not so much as sent a robot probe to the Moon in 30 years, because
as far as space-exploration advocates can tell, there is nothing, absolutely
nothing, of value to do on the Moon. Geologists are interested in the Moon's
formation. If there is ever a fusion reactor to meet the world's energy needs,
the "helium three" on the Moon might prove useful, but fusion reactors are
decades away from practicality, assuming they ever work. Spending $200 billion
on a Moon base that does nothing would be pure, undiluted government waste.

And a Moon base would not only not be useful to support a Mars mission--it would
be an obstacle to a Mars mission. Any weight bound for Mars can far more
efficiently depart directly from low-Earth orbit than a first stop at the Moon;
a stop at the Moon would require huge expenditures of fuel to land and take off
again. The landing, in turn, would accomplish absolutely nothing--any mission
components on the Moon would have been sent there from Earth, which means they
could have departed directly for Mars from low-Earth orbit at a far lower cost.

In the days to come, any administration official who says that a Moon base could
support a Mars mission is revealing himself or herself to be a total science
illiterate. When you hear, "A Moon base could support a Mars mission,"
substitute the words, "I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about."
...
Now, about this business of going to Mars. The Red Planet is plenty interesting,
and men and women are sure to go there someday. For the moment, talk of a Mars
mission is complete bunkum.

The Apollo spacecraft weighed 45 tons at departure from low-Earth orbit: it was
gone for about ten days, carried three people and traveled about 800,000 miles
total. A Mars mission would be gone for a minimum of a year (probably longer),
carry at least six people (a geologist, a biologist, two physicians, and two
career astronauts would be a skeleton crew), and travel 100 million miles or
more total (the distance to Mars varies significantly depending on the launch
year). So let's make a conservative guess and say an austere Mars-bound mission
would weigh 25 times what an Apollo mission weighed, at departure from low-Earth
orbit.

Now we're up to an 1,125-ton spacecraft and a $28 billion launch cost. (Probably
a Mars mission would operate in segments, with several robot supply ships
departing long before the manned craft; but for the cost calculation, the
driving factor is total weight.) Twenty-eight billion is twice NASA's budget
and, again, that is just the cost to launch the thing, not to build the ship,
staff it and support it. When Bush's father asked NASA in 1989 about a Mars
mission, the agency shot back a total program cost of $400 billion. That's $600
billion in today's money, and sounds about right as a Mars mission estimate.
This is assuming no pointless stopover at the Moon; add a Moon base and the
price zooms toward $1 trillion!