<story><title>Blue Moon</title><url>http://blueorigin.com/blue-moon</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>peterlk</author><text>I think most people (myself included) do not understand how much technological improvement costs.&lt;p&gt;Anecdote: I once had a conversation with a guy who worked at ITER, and he was pretty bullish (and he had no reason to bullshit me) on the prospect of fusion as a viable energy source, but frustrated with the internal politics of ITER. So I asked, &amp;quot;well, what would it take? If I could call up a bunch of rich people to get funding, how much would it take?&amp;quot; He casually said, &amp;quot;oh, probably 1.2 to 1.5 trillion dollars&amp;quot;. And then I understood why it was a multinational conglomerate that was funding it, and not a bunch of rich people.</text></item><item><author>azernik</author><text>Of &lt;i&gt;course&lt;/i&gt; it&amp;#x27;s less capable than Apollo - we don&amp;#x27;t have anywhere &lt;i&gt;near&lt;/i&gt; the lift capability of Saturn V anymore, and this program&amp;#x27;s budget is a rounding error in the $200B (inflation-adjusted) that went into Apollo.&lt;p&gt;I think people underestimate just how insane the investment was in that program: in the neighborhood of 0.25% of GDP for a decade.</text></item><item><author>Robotbeat</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m honestly underwhelmed. This is not more capability than Apollo (uncrewed variant of whose lander could land about 5 tons). A really high deck making egress difficult. Apparently expendable. Given Blue Origin&amp;#x27;s resources, they should be shooting far higher.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a bunch of small companies pursuing expendable lunar landers of similar capabilities. I worry Blue Origin will just crowd them out.&lt;p&gt;A reusable upper stage or reusable lander (or both) would be more interesting and more important. Bezos is&amp;#x2F;was the richest man and Blue origin is given roughly a billion dollars of capital every year, and a relatively modest expendable lunar lander is their big announcement? And even that they may have difficulty executing on in a timely manner.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think Blue Origin can&amp;#x27;t do this. I just think it&amp;#x27;s far too modest of a goal for a company with free rein over a billion dollars in additional annual capital.&lt;p&gt;...and I&amp;#x27;m also skeptical of mass drivers (of the typical type) and lunar mining. Plenty of shade thrown at Mars, but Mars has vastly more resources.&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the architecture of the lander is disappointing. A crasher stage (ala the Surveyor spacecraft which used a kick stage for deorbiting) for most of descent would be far more efficient. It&amp;#x27;d allow a much smaller and cheaper descent stage and much lower to the ground, making egress much easier.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>agent008t</author><text>Can anyone actually make an estimate with any reasonable degree of accuracy if the sum they need to estimate is in the trillions of dollars?&lt;p&gt;For example, it seems that in research usually when people say that something is a decade away what they really mean is that they have no idea. Is there a good reason why that is not the case here and the 1.5 trillion would be well spent?</text></comment>
<story><title>Blue Moon</title><url>http://blueorigin.com/blue-moon</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>peterlk</author><text>I think most people (myself included) do not understand how much technological improvement costs.&lt;p&gt;Anecdote: I once had a conversation with a guy who worked at ITER, and he was pretty bullish (and he had no reason to bullshit me) on the prospect of fusion as a viable energy source, but frustrated with the internal politics of ITER. So I asked, &amp;quot;well, what would it take? If I could call up a bunch of rich people to get funding, how much would it take?&amp;quot; He casually said, &amp;quot;oh, probably 1.2 to 1.5 trillion dollars&amp;quot;. And then I understood why it was a multinational conglomerate that was funding it, and not a bunch of rich people.</text></item><item><author>azernik</author><text>Of &lt;i&gt;course&lt;/i&gt; it&amp;#x27;s less capable than Apollo - we don&amp;#x27;t have anywhere &lt;i&gt;near&lt;/i&gt; the lift capability of Saturn V anymore, and this program&amp;#x27;s budget is a rounding error in the $200B (inflation-adjusted) that went into Apollo.&lt;p&gt;I think people underestimate just how insane the investment was in that program: in the neighborhood of 0.25% of GDP for a decade.</text></item><item><author>Robotbeat</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m honestly underwhelmed. This is not more capability than Apollo (uncrewed variant of whose lander could land about 5 tons). A really high deck making egress difficult. Apparently expendable. Given Blue Origin&amp;#x27;s resources, they should be shooting far higher.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a bunch of small companies pursuing expendable lunar landers of similar capabilities. I worry Blue Origin will just crowd them out.&lt;p&gt;A reusable upper stage or reusable lander (or both) would be more interesting and more important. Bezos is&amp;#x2F;was the richest man and Blue origin is given roughly a billion dollars of capital every year, and a relatively modest expendable lunar lander is their big announcement? And even that they may have difficulty executing on in a timely manner.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think Blue Origin can&amp;#x27;t do this. I just think it&amp;#x27;s far too modest of a goal for a company with free rein over a billion dollars in additional annual capital.&lt;p&gt;...and I&amp;#x27;m also skeptical of mass drivers (of the typical type) and lunar mining. Plenty of shade thrown at Mars, but Mars has vastly more resources.&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the architecture of the lander is disappointing. A crasher stage (ala the Surveyor spacecraft which used a kick stage for deorbiting) for most of descent would be far more efficient. It&amp;#x27;d allow a much smaller and cheaper descent stage and much lower to the ground, making egress much easier.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>moccachino</author><text>To put that number into perspective, the 2015 US Military budget was --4 trillion-- 600 billion dollars [1].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Military_budget_of_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Military_budget_of_the_United_...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>