re moonbase race nasa resources why in article c w un bpq zoo toronto edu henry zoo toronto edu henry spencer wrote the major component of any realistic plan to go to the moon cheaply for more than a brief visit at least is low cost transport to earth orbit for what it costs to launch one shuttle or two titan ivs you can develop a new launch system that will be considerably cheaper delta clipper might be a bit more expensive than this perhaps but there are less ambitious ways of bringing costs down quite a bit 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 course if a low priced system existed there might be demand i wonder if there might be some way of structuring a contest to encourage low cost payload delivery systems the accounting methods would probably be the hardest to work out for example would you allow rockwell to loan you the engines and so forth 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 i guess i d simplify this to say that waste is a slippery concept if your goal is manned lunar exploration in the next years then perhaps its not wasted money if your goal is to explore the moon for under million then you should put of this exploration for a decade or so craig craig keithley i don t remember i don t recall apple computer inc i got no memory of anything at all keithley apple com peter gabriel third album
