I can’t tell if the “life cycle” ends with the first launch in 2015 or includes some X number of additional launches beyond that. Regardless, the numbers are impressive, even in these days of trillions:
/– Ares I only : $17B to $20B
/– Orion capsule only: $20B to $29B
And no, that doesn’t include ops costs. As “Red” notes in comments:
Something like this was already done at Cosmic Log, but it would be interested to translate that $20B + $29B (~$50B) in more understandable terms:
25,000 Lunar Lander Challenges
100 COTS programs
> 500 Lunar Prospectors
500,000 XCOR Lynx tickets
250,000 SS2 tickets
500 BA 330 modules, or 1000 years of half-year BA 330 module leases
1000 Falcon 9 launches (mix of regular and heavy)
>5000 Falcon 1 launches
2000 Google Lunar X PRIZEs
1000 smallsats averaging $50M
… etc … That’s assuming no discounts for bulk purchases … and if you want variety in your space program, take off a zero from each of the above and have them all …
On the other hand, an administration that just increased the deficit by a factor of four, to trillions, probably thinks fifty billion is just couch-cushion change.
But is there a head tilt of compassion, along with the regret? When will we see the pictures of Chris Buckley and David Brooks? Brooks must be really shocked. That’s not the Barack Obama he knew. Why, that Barack Obama read Reinhold Niebuhr!
The rock, estimated to be no more than 200 feet wide, zoomed past our planet at an altitude of 40,000 miles at 1:44 p.m. universal time — or 8:44 EST.
Dubbed 2009 DD45, it was discovered only on Friday by Australian astronomers.
“…no more than 200 feet wide…”?
That’s plenty big enough to pack a hell of a wallop if it had hit off shore, likely wiping out much of the coastline of the surrounding continents. If it hit a populated area, it could have been easily mistaken for a nuke initially, perhaps setting off an international crisis, and even retaliation.
There is no excuse for how little prepared we are for these things.
Lee Stranahan admits that he wanted the Iraq war to fail.
Actually, it went beyond a desire, into fantasy and wishful thinking, as when Harry Reid moronically declared it a failure, and a war that was already lost.
Thanks to the new federal mortgage bailout bill, Americans like me are finally on track for housing security. Previously facing a $1.2 million debt from three mortgage on a home recently appraised at $43,500, less missing bathroom fixtures and windows, the President’s plan allowed me to renegotiate my payments down to a level that will keep me solvent until at least mid June-ish. Now that my family and various friends from Jimbo’s Tap Room no longer have to worry about having a stable crash pad, we are finally free to resume the spending that will lead America back to economic prosperity.
I wish I could take credit for it, but it took the collective effort of hundreds of thousands of us in the subprime community, working with the financial industry and public sector officials. Unfortunately, there is another group out there who is working to kill important financial bailout reforms just as they are sparking a renaissance in the American housing market. I’m speaking, of course, of the so-called “Tea Party” tax protesters.
I’m sure you’ve heard of them or read their emails: “Wah, I paid my mortgage.” “Wah, I didn’t use my house for an ATM.” “Wah, Dave I need that hundred back I lent you at Christmas.” Now, I’m as sympathetic to a good sob story as anybody, but these whiners have nobody to blame but themselves for their predicament. Anyone who kept track of the Gallup presidential polls last year should have known what was coming, so don’t blame me if you decided to waste your money paying your stupid mortgage. But, in the six-dimensional bizarro world of these noisy tax gripes, they expect me to give up my bailout to pay for their irresponsible lack of foresight! Helloooo?! Beam me up, Scotty!
I’m listening to the evening news on my last night in LA, after the announcement that the state unemployment is in double digits, hearing the RINO Governator talking about how “creating jobs is his highest priority.”
Well, ignoring the issue of “creating jobs” (which can be done by simply handing out money stolen from the taxpayers or borrowed from future taxpayers to pay people to do various things of various and dubious value, often negative) as opposed to creating wealth and not making war on prosperity, here’s an idea, Arnie.
How about doing an analysis of previous California policy to figure out why the jobs were destroyed, and stop doing and start undoing those things? Or is that too hard?