re moonbase race nasa resources why in article keithley kip apple com keithley apple com craig keithley writes ah there s the rub and a catch to boot for the purposes of a contest you ll probably not compete if n you can t afford the ride to get there and although lower priced delivery systems might be doable without demand its doubtful that anyone will develop a new system you re assuming that the low cost delivery system has to be a separate project but why if you are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in hopes of winning a billion dollar prize it is cheaper to develop your own launch system charging its entire development cost against your contest entry than to try to do it with existing launchers no other demand is necessary any plan for doing sustained lunar exploration using existing launch systems is wasting money in a big way this depends on the how soon the new launch system comes on line in other words perhaps a great deal of worthwhile technology life support navigation etc could be developed prior to a low cost launch system you wouldn t want to use the expensive stuff forever but i d hate to see folks waiting to do anything until a low cost mac oops i mean launch system comes on line you re assuming that it s going to take a decade to build a new launch system but why the saturn v took less than six years depending on exactly when you date its start pegasus took about three from project start to first flight before sdio chickened out on orbital development the target date for an orbital dc y flight was if you really want speed consider that the first prototypes of the thor missile still in service as the core of the delta launcher shipped to the usaf less than months after the development go ahead one of the most pernicious myths in this whole business is the belief that you can t build a launcher without taking ten years and spending billions of dollars it isn t true and never was
