re moonbase race nasa resources why in article apr aurora alaska edu nsmca aurora alaska edu writes so how much would it cost as a private venture assuming you could talk the u s government into leasing you a couple of pads in florida why must it be a us government space launch pad directly i mean in fact you probably want to avoid us government anything for such a project the pricetag is invariably too high either in money or in hassles the important thing to realize here is that the big cost of getting to the moon is getting into low earth orbit everything else is practically down in the noise the only part of getting to the moon that poses any new problems beyond what you face in low orbit is the last km the actual landing and that is not immensely difficult of course you can spend sagadollars saga is the metric prefix for beelyuns and beelyuns on things other than the launches but you don t have to 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 any plan for doing sustained lunar exploration using existing launch systems is wasting money in a big way given this questions like whose launch facilities you use are not a minor detail they are very important to the cost of the launches which dominates the cost of the project all work is one man s work henry spencer u of toronto zoology kipling henry zoo toronto edu utzoo henry
