Today’s NYT reports that Iraq and Afghanistan if they drag on for another five years will comprise, “The Trillion Dollar War”. World War 2 was a multitrillion dollar war. Every war with more than a million casualties is a trillion dollar war if you take the value of a life at a million dollars. That might not be reasonable some time and place where the median income is less than ten thousand dollars, but I would call for measuring by purchasing power parity. While the article is a pretty poor analysis considering opportunity costs. First, that veteran’s health costs would have been big without the war. Second, that salary and so on would have to be paid without the war. Third, that there would be some major price to pay in blood and coin keeping the prior regimes in place in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Seen in that light, a trillion dollar war is a bargain. Especially if it results in friendly economies (if not friendly polities) in Iraq and Afghanistan going forward.

As I have stated before, we should step up to the plate and spend the next trillion colonizing the Moon and Mars. $50 billion a year could launch 20 times as much stuff into orbit as was launched last year and colonists could pay for their own payload. With the long bond rate at 5%, the net present value of $50 billion a year forever is a trillion dollars.

There are a bunch of good reasons why the Moon would be a better bet than Iraq. Colonizing the Moon would not face any guerilla warfare. There are no existing users of Lunar resources. There is no government worthy of note to displace. There are no Lunar sympathizers that would start violent revolution if we went. (If you are out there, keep quiet until after the colonization gets going so you can have your fifteen minutes while I have my colonization.)

No air on the Moon? Oxygen is there and nitrogen costs $0.50/gallon on Earth. Let’s say we imported 11,000 liters of air a day and just vented it into space. A liter of air weighs about 1.25 grams. Importing your 14 kg of air a day is not a big deal. $50 billion a year could deliver enough air for 1,000 people to just vent every single breath to space at today’s launch rates. Don’t you think a thousand people could work out a way to recycle and replace air from local materials? There are 4000 kilograms of nitrogen in every 1000 tons of regolith. At 1300K, some of it will come out as Nitrogen gas (a ton worth of various gases). If I could get $50 billion a year for selling air on the Moon, I would sure as heck work hard to figure out how to do it for less.

So we could have our lunar colony and if people consumed two pounds of earth imported food per day (which should be plenty) and we can get air and water recycling down pat, we could support 7,000 folks. If we can get food production going then we can support a lot more for $50B/year. We would need to get the cost of the mass to the Moon down to $100,000 per year if we wanted to support 500,000 on the Moon like we have in Wyoming for $50 billion/year. That would either mean just 5 kg in Earth imports at $20,000/kg to the Moon or about 20 kg at $5000/kg to the Moon which is roughly what Elon Musk is promising by 2010.

By Sam, not Rand

I wish that someone would explain just what is meant by “microgravity technology” in this encouraging article about progress in stem cell production. It could be inferred by an uncareful reader that this research occurred in space (the only place that we can get sustained microgravity), but that doesn’t really seem to be the case. Rather, it is apparently a spinoff of bioreactors that were originally developed for use in orbit (presumably aboard the ISS), but perhaps never used there. The reactions seem to be occuring down here, in a full gravity.

This is often the case with all of the predictions of space manufacturing. By the time someone gets around to doing it on orbit, someone comes up with a cheaper and more practical way to do it down here (unsurprising, considering how expensive and time consuming it is to even do an experiment with NASA in space, let alone set up an actual production facility).

Nonethess, this is presumably a spinoff of NASA spending that arguably (though by no means certainly) wouldn’t have occurred in its absence, and that’s all to the good. But while this is a great benefit, it’s not at all obvious that it was worth the cost, or that it couldn’t have been achieved in some other (perhaps less costly, with more benefits) way. As I noted a couple years ago (just before the loss of Columbia, in fact):

Certainly there is some spinoff technology benefit from the [space] program–it’s impossible to engage in any high-tech endeavor without occasionally coming up with serendipitous results. And of course, there’s occasionally some cross fertilization with military space activities (though from a taxpayer standpoint, disappointly little). But neither of these facts is reason, in itself, to either support or oppose it.

Proponents [of the ISS] need to come up with real goals, and real reasons, that can resonate with the American people–something difficult to do with the program as currently planned, in which we spend billions for a Motel 6 in space that can support only half a dozen people, even if current plans come to fruition.

Opponents need to get their facts in order, and come up with good reasons to end it (and perhaps replace it with something more useful for getting humanity off the planet). The manned space program has, so far, been very lucky in its enemies.

I add with some amusement that, when I was googling for that old Fox piece I found this “critique” of it, in a breathless paen to space spinoffs, over at the “Ethical Atheist” web site. Note the logical shredding of my arguments:

Many of you are familiar with the highly-biased commentary of Fox News. In researching for this article we found the following commentary on NASA’s space program. At first, we were surprised and outraged. But, considering the source, it no longer surprises us. Fox is known for its highly-conservative, pro-religious, liberal-slamming, uneducated opinions…

[repeat poster’s list of “benefits”]

…We hope the “Benefits” listed above ‘resonate with the American people’ more than the small-minded opinions presented by the Fox News Channel!

Which is to say, of course, note the absence of logic or argument. It’s pure ad hominem against Fox News (which of course neither wrote or even solicited the topic–it was purely mine). And I’m “highly-conservative” and “pro-religious”? And “uneducated”? Who knew?