A post that starts out discussing how many members the Mars Society has devolves into claims of how much Martian missions will cost.
The cost to the Moon ($150-300 B)or to Mars ($599-899 B, just small change for the better feeling) covers the round trips and the base setup for a period of 20-30 years. It would no longer be to plant a flag there stuff as the last lunar trip did. The cost is the stay and the development the new world for a period of 20-30 years each in this century. For the return to the Moon, it would cost $10-12 B each year for the 20-30 years period. For the Mars cost, it would cost $20-30 B or more each year for the period of 20-30 years.
When I see thing like this, I just shake my head. Beware prognosticators bearing costs of space activities.
No one knows, particularly because the activity itself is often ill defined, but even if not, such estimates do not, because they cannot, take into account future changes in technology, and particularly future changes in launch costs that may arise from much greater private activity. They also often make foolish assumptions about no propellant depots, and multiple launches of a heavy lifter, etc.
John Mankins offers a useful corrective, one comment later:
I’d like to make just a general observation about this topic: there is no one “firm fixed price” way to explore and develop a frontier. There are NO “prix fixe” menus for the future.
However, there are lots, and lots of choices. As it happens, some of these yield lower costs, others yield greater accomplishments, and still others result in faster (or slower) schedules. Examples include:
– What kind of propulsion will be used?
– How many crew members will go on what missions?
– Will we use local re-fueling of vehicles?
– Will missions systems be expendable or reusable?
– Will the program employ ISRU (in situ resource utilization), and if so, how soon?
– Will electrical power cost $100 per kilowatt-hour, or $0.10 per kilowatt-hour?
– Will life support closed or open?
– Will robotic systems be autonomous? capable of learning? or teleoperated? or…?etc., etc., etc.
There are two extremes to avoid. First, we should never assume that future exploration missions will be “too cheap to meter” in order to make a sale to Congress. And Second, we should never claim that human exploration missions will be unimaginably expensive as a means of indirectly supporting other goals in space.
The space community can be its own worst enemy: we cannot allow this to happen.
We should try to stay focused on the goal of extending human presence and activity into space — using both robots and humans — and work constantly to make the accomplishment of that goal as affordable, beneficial and rapid as possible through aggressive innovation, appropriate technology advancements, and well-managed systems projects…
Not to mention a much greater utilization of the private sector, and particularly that portion of the private sector whose goal is to go to Mars (e.g., SpaceX).