it cost $ 2. 2b to land a man on the moon.
how much did it cost to land a man on the moon?
$ 2. 2b
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bullet::::- estimates of the cost per unit mass of launching cargo or people from the moon vary and the cost impacts of future technological improvements are difficult to predict. an upper bound on the cost of launching material from the moon might be about $40,000,000 per kilogram, based on dividing the apollo program costs by the amount of material returned. at the other extreme, the incremental cost of launching material from the moon using an electromagnetic accelerator could be quite low. the efficiency of launching material from the moon with a proposed electric accelerator is suggested to be about 50%. if the carriage of a mass driver weighs the same as the cargo, two kilograms must be accelerated to orbital velocity for each kilogram put into orbit. the overall system efficiency would then drop to 25%. so 1.4 kilowatt-hours would be needed to launch an incremental kilogram of cargo to low orbit from the moon. at $0.1/kilowatt-hour, a typical cost for electrical power on earth, that amounts to $0.16 for the energy to launch a kilogram of cargo into orbit. for the actual cost of an operating system, energy loss for power conditioning, the cost of radiating waste heat, the cost of maintaining all systems, and the interest cost of the capital investment are considerations.
colonization of the moon