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Jun 10, 2024 · This journey hasn’t been without its costs, however, and the exploration of NASA’s annual budget from its inception to the present day offers a compelling insight into the financial fuel behind these momentous accomplishments. Here’s the budget of NASA, year by year between 1958 and 2024. 2024 NASA Budget. 2024 NASA Budget is $24.875 billion
This table shows the total cost of the Apollo program, both in its original 1969 value and adjusted for inflation to reflect its value in 2024 dollars. The inflation adjustment is based on the 2022 GDP deflator index. An additional row includes an estimated cost if related projects like Gemini and robotic lunar missions are factored in.
- Overview
- Figuring out the true cost of Apollo mission
- A different calculation today
In 1961, when President John F. Kennedy committed the nation to sending an astronaut to the moon "before this decade is out," the federal budget enjoyed a surplus and economists were calling for government spending to stimulate the economy.
Even so, the final price tag still boggles the mind. Between 1960 and 1973, NASA spent $28 billion developing the rockets, spacecraft and ground systems needed for what became the Apollo program. According to a recent analysis by the Planetary Society, that translates into an estimated $288.1 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars.
That's roughly equivalent to spending NASA's current annual budget on a single project and sustaining that effort for more than a decade.
Now, 50 years after the first Apollo moon landing, NASA is aggressively pursuing a Trump administration directive to return astronauts to the lunar surface in 2024. After five decades of technological progress, NASA will not be starting from scratch, and the total cost will be much lower than the price tag for Apollo.But it will not be cheap, and billions in additional funding will be required.
The space agency has not revealed any detailed cost estimates, and it's not yet known whether Congress will go along. But a new Gallup poll shows most Americans continue to support space exploration.
"Solid majorities of Americans feel that NASA's budget is justifiable and that it should be maintained or increased," the polling organization wrote on its website. "The 1969 moon landing's upcoming anniversary may have elevated the historic achievement in Americans' minds as of late, as their recall of the first man on the moon is stronger than it was 20 years ago.
Casey Dreier, author of the analysis and senior space policy adviser for the Planetary Society, said the analysis was conducted because the historical record is incomplete, difficult to unravel and, in some cases, simply incorrect.
Given the Trump administration's directive to send astronauts back to the moon by the end of 2024 in the newly named Artemis program, budget estimates for the Apollo program and the money actually spent provide valuable insights into hurdles the new moon program will face on Capitol Hill.
"How much was spent on Apollo, and when, is relevant as NASA has once again been directed to return humans to the moon," he writes on the Planetary Society website. "To properly evaluate the seriousness of this directive, it makes sense to compare its spending proposals to the one data point we have for a successful human lunar mission.
"How much money did it take to do it the first time? How was it spent? And, perhaps most importantly, when did the money show up?"
In reconstructing the cost of Apollo, Dreier evaluated official NASA budget submissions to Congress between 1961 and 1974, actual spending as reported by the space agency and countless supporting documents.
To adjust the results for inflation, he used NASA's New Start Index, designed specifically for aerospace projects, which is believed to provide more accurate insights compared to the Consumer Price Index, which focuses on household and consumer goods.
Today's political and economic realities are vastly different than the ones Kennedy faced.
"The one thing that people forget about Apollo is that the federal budget was in surplus and economists were calling for government spending to stimulate the economy in 1961," Logsdon said. "So the kind of trillion dollars a month deficit spending we're doing wasn't there at all. And I think that ... may be the overriding constraint on doing anything like Apollo."
NASA's 2020 budget request, including $1.6 billion in supplemental funding to kick-start the Artemis moon program, comes to $22.6 billion. Of that total, $6.4 billion is directed to exploration, a 27% increase over 2019 levels.
Since 2005, NASA has spent by some estimates approximately $16 billion developing the re-purposed Orion crew capsule that will carry astronauts to and from the moon in the Artemis program and nearly $20 billion, according to at least one estimate, developing the huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket needed to launch the lunar landing missions.
Both programs underwent extensive modifications, driving up costs, as program goals changed between the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations.
As it now stands, an initial unpiloted SLS test flight is planned for late next year or, more likely, 2021 with the first piloted flight of an Orion capsule expected in the 2022-23 timeframe. The first Artemis moon landing, using the third SLS booster and a yet-to-be designed lander, is planned for 2024.
- CBS News Space Consultant
- 3 min
Jun 14, 2019 · For comparison, NASA's last moonshot, the Constellation program that never came to fruition, was announced with an estimated cost of $104 billion in 2005. The Apollo program cost $25 billion ...
Aug 12, 2024 · Aaron O'Neill, Aug 12, 2024. This statistic shows the estimated cost of each individual Apollo mission, from Apollo 7 in 1968 to the final mission, Apollo 17, in 1970. Apollo 7 received less than ...
Nov 15, 2021 · The new audit focuses on the Artemis program's schedule, its projected costs and how NASA's acquisition and programmatic strategies affect the coming moonshot. It was conducted from December 2020 ...
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Dec 2, 2019 · Between 1959, the first year of NASA, and 1973, a year after the most recent moon landing, NASA spent $20.5 billion ($152.7 billion in 2018 dollars) on its lunar directive or 42% of all NASA spending. The most expensive aspects of the project were the rockets to get astronauts into space and the modules they would travel in.
