alt Hacker NewsI have to admit, I've been an Artemis hater ($4 billion per launch lol) but the experience of watching people go back around the Moon has been incredibly inspiring, and it proves to me that maybe we can still do hard things
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> $4 billion per launch
This is not a lot of money on a nation-state scale. It's equal to giving every person in the US about US$12.
Ignoring the fact that we aren't using money for rocket fuel (that is people are benefitting from us spending that money) the potential upside is immense. There are a time of resources available in the asteroids and a moon base makes mining those resources easier and cheaper.
Those $4 billion per launch are about 9 hours of entitlement spending (social security & health programs).
> $4 billion per launch lol
$1.3 billion for the mission hardware.
$2.2 billion for the single use SLS.
$0.5 billion for the launch pad.
> watching people go back around the Moon
Two of the missions were actually meant to land. One of them still may.
> $4 billion per launch
If Trump gets his $1.5T military budget, that would be about the military spend per day I think?
The longer term value of having moon outposts for observation, mining, etc. will pay off massively.
This is way bigger than just putting people on the moon or hubris. It's the prerequisite for everything we've also said about Mars. Elon just muddied the waters so much that people are so negative about anything else.
>we can still do hard things
Absolutely! What do you have in mind?
> $4 billion per launch lol
The US spends almost that much on net debt interest each day (~$3 billion/day[0]). Not that adding to the debt helps at all, but the old proverb about being penny wise and pound foolish seems relevant
0. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61951