The Cost Of Going To The Moon and Related Topics

50 years ago tomorrow, the United States landed men on the moon.  The total cost of getting them there and the subsequent rockets ran $28 million between 1960 and 1973.  If this amount were readjusted into today's money it would equal $288.1 billion That is quite an increase.

The actual cost of sending Apollo 11 cost the United States $355 million which in todays dollars would be $1.3 billion in 1994.  Of the $355 million, $200 million was spent on the construction of spacecraft and its equipment.

The original cost of the Apollo program began at $7 million but eventually jumped to $20 million, ending at the $28 million.  At the peak of the program in 1966, the Apollo program used 60 percent of the $5.2 billion budget.

In the meantime, Trump has declared that we need to get people back to the moon via the Artemis program.  The cost is estimated to be $30 billion to make the deadline of having them there by 2024.

This cost includes recruiting companies, building a lunar space station, and landing people on the South Pole of the moon.  The idea is to get people on the moon first before heading off to Mars.  There is a question as to how accurate that amount is because NASA spent $104 billion for the Constellation program that never actually left the ground, or the space station that is estimated to have cost $100 billion to this point.

This article has lots of figures, statistics, and information.  It is a good one to have students read and decide which ones are important and which ones are not as important.  It also have a lovely graph showing the break down of costs by year devoted to the landing vehicles, space craft, development and operations, ground facilities, and other projects.

On the other hand, there are collectors out there who collect anything dealing with the space program and pay the most for items associated with Apollo 11.  Sotheby's is holding an auction of space items which they expect to get quite a bit of money from.  For instance, they expect three bundles of magnetic tape from mission control in Houston to fetch between $1 million and $2 million because they are the earliest and sharpest material.  In addition, a copy of the Apollo 11 flight manual is expected to go for around $9 million.

That gives you an idea of how much it cost to get man to the moon back in July of 1969, the cost of the program, the cost of the upcoming program, and what space mementoes bring on the market.  It' s easy to figure out questions that use this information. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great weekend.  I'll be back to normal topics on Monday.