dollars to mars
i keep hearing about how the u.s. can't afford to send people to the moon or mars. this is a huge pet peeve of mine, so here i go. for everyone who thinks we can't afford going to mars (you can do your own interpolation for the moon) (these numbers were figured out by brian enke at southwest research institute):

the mars direct plan touted by zubrin and the mars society will cost $7-30 billion, depending on who you're asking. it will take 5-7 years to develop, and deliver 53.8 metric tons to the surface of mars (which is a very minimal amount, but it can be shown that it's enough). that works out to about $1B-$6B/year.

the current (up until today) plan for going to mars, known as the nasa mars design reference mission, will cost $40-60 billion, and take 7-10 years to develop. it would deliver 153 metric tons to the surface of mars (which is plenty). that works out to about $4B-$8B/year.

for reference, the so-called 90-day report commissioned by bush sr. when he said we should go to mars cost $450 billion and would have taken 30 years to develop, but it was grossly over-designed. that's $15B/year.

which just happens to be nasa's current (not including bush's request for an extra billion) budget for fiscal year 2004. half of that $15B is for the manned spaceflight program, of which $2.1B goes to the space station development & operations, $4B to the shuttle, and $1.7B for the space launch initiative, aka the orbital space plane, aka the crew exploration vehicle.

so that's $8B/year that this country spends on manned spaceflight (not including anything the air force might be doing). the entire federal budget for 2004 was $2200B. nasa currently gets 0.68% of the entire federal budget.

some numbers to compare to, from various government web sites and so forth:
-social security gets $493B/yr from the federal budget
-medicare/medicaid gets $440B/yr from the federal budget
-the defense department gets $390B/yr from the federal budget
-$307B/yr from the federal budget goes toward paying off the deficit
-the iraq war cost taxpayers $79B in 2003, and is estimated to cost $87B in 2004
-$40B/yr from the federal budget goes to unemployment
-the airline bailout in 2002 cost taxpayers $20B

that's all well and good, and we can say "poor nasa" until we're blue in the face, but a dollar not used by nasa is a dollar that can be used for something else, right?

well, no. the us government works on something called deficit/surplus spending. that means that a "dime saved" from nasa is a dime of deficit reduction, not a dime to be spent elsewhere. if the us wants to spend more money on project x, it will run up the deficit.

okay, but doesn't that mean that money that nasa uses could be used instead to pay off the deficit? this is true, but it would be a small drop in a large bucket -- dropping nasa entirely would, in principle, increase the deficit payoff by just under 5%. but think about this: nasa's entire budget is a third of the us trade deficit for the month of march in 2003.

some more federal numbers to ponder:
-the gross domestic product estimated revenue for 2003 was $10,500B
-the federal budget for 2003 was $2,128B (20% of GDP)
-the budget for nasa for 2003 was $15B (0.14% of GDP)
-that trade deficit for just the month of march in 2003 was $42.9B (0.4% of GDP)

and, for reference, some monetary amounts from other parts of our lives (in current-year dollars):
-microsoft's revenue for 2004 is estimated to be $32B. their income for 2004 will be $13B. microsoft's assets in 2002 amounted to $67.6B.
-general motors corporation's revenue for 2002 was $177.3B. income in 2002 was $3.9B. gm's 2003 reserve was $20B.
-the average assets of ten randomly-selected investment management firms amount to $390.7B.
-the yearly remittances from filipino migrant workers to family in the philippines is $7B.
-the us and europe spend $31B/year combined on ice cream
-people in the us spent $114B on alcoholic beverages in 2002
-artwork sold worldwide is valued at $100B/year
-the estimated cost of spam to us businesses (assuming 7 min/day of time lost) is $87B/year
-again, a manned mission to mars would cost the us $1-8B/year.

and finally, what about apollo? the budget for the apollo missions maxed to $3B/yr (current-year dollars) in 1966, which was 0.4% of the GDP. that dropped to 0.2% of the GDP in 1970. today, 0.4% of the GDP would be $42B.

so, for all those who say we can't afford to send people to mars, i say, do the math. and if you don't think nasa can handle it, send the money you'd spend on that piece of modern art or that ice cream cone to, say, burt rutan at scaled composites, or bob zubrin at the mars society.

again, thanks to brian enke of the southwest research institute and the rocky mountain mars society for all these numbers.