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Trump on Falcon Heavy: "I'm so used to hearing different numbers with NASA"
During a cabinet meeting on Thursday inside the White House, President Donald Trump called attention to several model rockets on the table before him. They included an Atlas V, a Falcon 9, a Space Launch System, and more. The president seemed enthused to see the launch vehicles. "Before me are some rocket ships," the president said. "You haven't seen that for this country in a long time."
Then, in remarks probably best characterized as spur of the moment, the president proceeded to absolutely demolish the government's own effort to build rockets by noting the recent launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket. He cited the cost as $80 million. (The list price on SpaceX's website is $90 million.)
"I noticed the prices of the last one they say cost $80 million," Trump said. "If the government did it, the same thing would have cost probably 40 or 50 times that amount of money. I mean literally. When I heard $80 million, I'm so used to hearing different numbers with NASA.''
NASA has not, in fact, set a price for flying the SLS rocket. But Ars has previously estimated that, including the billions of dollars in development cost, the per-flight fees for the SLS rocket will probably be close to $3 billion. Indeed, the development costs of SLS and its ground systems between now and its first flight could purchase 86 launches of the privately developed Falcon Heavy rocket. So President Trump's estimate of NASA's costs compared to private industry does not appear to be wildly off the mark.
[*] SLS: Space Launch System
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(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @06:36PM (1 child)
You're asking the wrong question. You should be asking why should we go to space, if every bit of activity is a large cost to us on Earth? The answer to that is that we don't have a good reason in that case beyond rather trivial space activity.
The profit motive means that we have space activity that is self-funding.
The problem here is that we have a space program not a space civilization. Selling out for profit, as you put it, is the sure way to create that space civilization. Without genuine economic activity in space that returns more than it costs, space stuff will always be a hobby.
And China.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday March 10 2018, @06:01AM
People going around and around in circles is not America's proud destiny in space. I want NASA to lead an innovative space exploration program to send American astronauts back to the Moon, and eventually Mars. Russia & China are doing a partnership about going to the Moon. Maybe we can join them. Why not?