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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Canadian newspaper link. Okay, I get that it takes $10,000 per kilo to get stuff out of Earth's orbit. And I get that the moon has one-sixth the gravitational pull of the Earth. But how do we get to "We'll save money by launching from a moon base"? Will not every single kilo that goes into a vehicle launched from the moon necessarily have come from raw materials launched first from Earth, and then again from the moon? Unless NASA has a really cool way of making computers and rocket fuel out of moon rocks.

Gregg Easterbrook, writing a few days ago:

• And a Moon base would not only not be useful to support a Mars mission--it would be an obstacle to a Mars mission. Any weight bound for Mars can far more efficiently depart directly from low-Earth orbit than a first stop at the Moon; a stop at the Moon would require huge expenditures of fuel to land and take off again. The landing, in turn, would accomplish absolutely nothing--any mission components on the Moon would have been sent there from Earth, which means they could have departed directly for Mars from low-Earth orbit at a far lower cost.
  
  In the days to come, any administration official who says that a Moon base could support a Mars mission is revealing himself or herself to be a total science illiterate. When you hear, "A Moon base could support a Mars mission," substitute the words, "I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about." Hint to reporters: If any administration official says "a Moon base could support a Mars mission," quickly ask, "What was the fuel fraction of the Lunar Excursion Module?" The answer is two-thirds. The LEM was what landed on the Moon during Apollo, and rocket propulsion has not changed much since, meaning that any future Mars spacecraft that stops at the Moon will expend two-thirds of its weight merely to land there and take off again. This renders the idea of stopping at the Moon on the way to Mars patent drivel. (Actually only about 15 percent of the descent weight of the LEM returned to lunar orbit, so the fuel-fraction calculation for a Moon stopover is even worse.)

If the Bush people aren't talking to scientists about this, then it's purely political, right?

Easterbrook also says:

• So far all money numbers announced for the Bush plan seem complete nonsense, if not outright dishonesty. We shouldn't expect George W. Bush himself to know that $12 billion is not enough to develop a spaceship. We should expect the people around Bush, and at the top of NASA, to know this. And apparently they are either astonishingly ill-informed and naïve, or are handing out phony numbers for political purposes, to get the foot in the door for far larger sums later.

Depressing.