[panick21]

The budget is actually not that much worse. If you adjust for inflation.

On avg NASA budget was about the same as now. But now we do more things now. But between Constellation/SLS and Orion this new Shuttle based architecture has as much money as Apollo while having done almost non of it. Before it is where Apollo ended up, it will cost much, much more then Apollo.

But even if what you said was true, a gigantic amount of infrastructure that was paid for in the 1960s is still in use today. A huge amount of fundamental research that was required is already done. That alone should make it much cheaper.

Same goes for development, Artemis is not developing any new engines, while Apollo had to develop many new engines.

> The big budget is being allocated to brutes killing people in the streets and a decadent ballroom for the emperor.

Except of course that Korea/Vietnam were much more expensive then what were are doing now.

[mmustapic]

The budget is very much different, as % of the total federal budget (4% vs 1%) and in USD adjusted for inflation (60B vs 20B).

[panick21]

The “% of the federal budget” comparison is mostly a rhetorical trick. It can matter politically, sure, but it’s a terrible way to compare programs across time. Apollo happened before a bunch of Great Society-era spending and later expansions in the federal budget. Comparing shares across radically different eras is basically apples-to-elephants.

I spent some time trying to get solid numbers because I was actually interested in this.

Inflation-adjusted averages:

Apollo-era NASA average (FY1961–FY1972): ~$44.2B/year (2024 dollars)

NASA average over the last ~20 years: ~$25B/year (2024 dollars)

So over FY1961–FY1972 (12 years), that’s roughly $44.2B × 12 ≈ $530B in today’s money for all of NASA.

And what did that buy?

A NASA that was basically inventing the modern space industry:

- building launch sites (LC-39 etc.)

- building huge test facilities and stands

- building control centers / mission operations

- building manufacturing capability at scale

- building/expanding NASA centers

- building DSN and deep-space comms infrastructure

- massive amounts of fundamental research and basic engineering research

- building multiple human spacecraft programs (Mercury → Gemini → Apollo)

- developing major new engines (F-1, J-2, and a bunch of others)

- building multiple rockets and variants

and flying tons of missions, including 6 Moon landings

But of course, NASA wasn’t only Apollo. Even though Apollo dominated, NASA also did a bunch of major non-lunar work: Mariner, Orbiting Solar Observatory, Echo / Telstar / Relay / Syncom, X-15, and the beginnings of Skylab, etc.

A good summary is here: https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo

That article’s Apollo-only number is around $257B (in 2020 dollars) depending on what you include. I used 2024 $ above for budget. But its close.

Now compare to Constellation and its children (Orion + SLS).

A fair estimate for the cost to get to where we are today is around ~$90B (not counting suits or the SpaceX / Blue Origin landers). And what did we get for that? So far, a few test very incomplete flights.

Artemis/SLS is not doing Apollo-style clean-sheet propulsion development. It mostly reuses Shuttle-era propulsion (RS-25 + solids) with restarts/updates, rather than developing new engines like Apollo had to.

Looking forward gets fuzzier, but current projections suggest roughly:

~$20–25B more before the first crewed lunar landing (assuming the schedule doesn’t slip again)

then for five more landings, under optimistic “one per year” cadence assumptions, maybe another ~$30B or so

So you end up around ~$150B total if everything goes right from here. And note: this assumes huge savings because SpaceX and Blue Origin are spending lots of their own money rather than NASA building its own lander in the Apollo style.

So very roughly:

~$150B (Constellation → SLS/Orion → first 6 landings, optimistic) vs

~$250B-ish (Apollo-only, depending on inclusion choices and dollar basis)

And my basic point still stands: Apollo had to build the ecosystem, the infrastructure, and the foundational research base from scratch. A gigantic amount of that 1960s infrastructure is still in use today, and 60+ years of engineering and technology progress should matter. That alone should be worth well over $100B in “things you don’t need to reinvent.”

In pure execution terms, it’s hard to argue Apollo wasn’t on a totally different level.

[mmustapic]

By your own data, Apollo had 65% more money than SLS/Orion.

My point is, Apollo had a clear objective: put people on the moon. When that was achieved, they shut it down.

SLS objective is: do something NASA-like with astronauts, using current suppliers as much as possible, and better/larger than Apollo. Oh, we are going to ask you to change plans all the time.

So it's not about risk averse culture, or the decline of western civilisation, or something like that. The reason is that nobody cares about going to the moon. That shows in fuzzy requirements and much less money for it.

BTW, thanks for the hard numbers, it's a nice analysis.

[panick21]

> By your own data, Apollo had 65% more money than SLS/Orion.

I would say by my own data Apollo has to do 800% more work given the point on where it started.

> My point is, Apollo had a clear objective: put people on the moon. When that was achieved, they shut it down.

This isn't true. The Apollo program had many more objectives and was continuing and was about to do many more things. The politics around it just changed.

If it was a single goal, then they could have stopped after Apollo 11.

And of course after moon landings stopped, Skylab and other post-Apollo programs continued. Much of the Apollo hardware continued to operate for quite a while longer.

> SLS objective is: do something NASA-like with astronauts, using current suppliers as much as possible, and better/larger than Apollo. Oh, we are going to ask you to change plans all the time.

Yeah but those changes in plan don't actually change the hardware of the rocket itself. Its always the exact same rocket. It just gets new mission that are designed to work for it, not the other way around. So you can't really say SLS/Orion was delayed because of chaining requirements.

> So it's not about risk averse culture, or the decline of western civilisation, or something like that.

The very fact that the requirements are fuzzy and the political process is a shit-show that gets nothing done and provides bad intensive is exactly the civilization level failure. Just as much as when you try to land on the moon or build a high speed rail line.

> BTW, thanks for the hard numbers, it's a nice analysis.

NASA and government is pretty good on this and lots of people have done work on this, specially Casey at the Planetary Society. So I do not deserve all that much credit.

And for SLS I have been following the program for 10+ years and have been arguing since 2015 that the only rational plan is canceling it. But the congressional alliance behind it is just incredible.