Annotated Press Release: CAGW: Moon, Mars Missions Not a Priority for Taxpayers

EDITOR’S NOTE

Editor’s note: This press release by CAGW is a classic example of grabbing numbers out of thin air – selectively – and then weaving them together to tell a story – one that is based on a particular point of view. Indeed, if you present enough numbers, and assert that they are true, some people will actually fall for the basic premise you present without questioning the veracity of your data. What really annoys me is groups like this who profess to be looking out for the taxpayer when in fact they are often advancing their own personal political agendas. Moreover, they do so with selective citation of facts.

In the case of the CAGW estimate for a mission to Mars, they simply cite a number ($1 Trillion) but do not explain where they got that number. I guess they don’t cite a reference – because they can’t – no study has ever been done which shows that any misison(s) to Mars – either prosped by President Bush, his father, or any other President, would ever come remotely close to such an estimate.

How is such unsubstantiated bogus cost data helping anyone?

Also, CAGW is annoyed that NASA “currently lacks the ability to launch a shuttle beyond low-earth orbit.” I certainly share Mr. Schatz’s apparent disappointment that the U.S. does not yet have the ability to send astronauts on interplanetary expeditions. But it appears he may not be aware that the space shuttle wasn’t designed to fly beyond low Earth orbit. Ignorance of such a basic fact certainly calls into question his credibility about more complex matters.

Oh yes, this organization is so incapable of getting even basic facts straight that they listed their website in their press release as being “www.cagw.gov“ when in reality it is www.cagw.org ! See this link and this link for the original release.

The following excerpt explains where this $1 Trillion figure came from – and why it is simply an urban myth.

Excerpt from “New Moon Rising“

A trillion here, a trillion there …

However, with regard to the Bush space policy, it would seem that the Kerry campaign was a little too eager to try and cast doubt on budget numbers used by the Bush Administration—and thus undermine the credibility of whatever Bush proposed to do in space.

In a 5 April 2004 official press release titled ‘New Report Reveals $6 Trillion in Hidden Spending in Bush Budget’, the Kerry campaign says, “The True Cost of the Mars Mission ($160 billion to $1 trillion): President Bush has only included $1 billion in increased NASA funding to fulfill his ambitious plan to establish a lunar base and land people on Mars. Independent estimates of the cost of the Mars mission range from $160 billion to $1 trillion.[3]”The $1 trillion reference is listed as “[3] The $160 billion estimate is from Congressional Testimony by Michael Griffin, former Chief Engineer of NASA on 3/10/04. The $1 trillion estimate is from Gregg Easterbrook, ‘Red Scare,’ The New Republic, 2/2/04.”

In Gregg Easterbrook’s 2 February 2004 article ‘Red Scare,’ cited as a source for a mission cost estimate by the Kerry campaign, you can see that Easterbrook uses only conjectural semantics—and not any actual costs, specific designs, or mission architectures, to imagine that the cost of a single mission to Mars would be $1 trillion. How Easterbrook arrived at the number is simply not revealed. By the tone of Easterbrook’s article, it is clear that he does not like the Bush space policy. As such, he made up some sticker-shock to help him make his case. The interesting thing about this $1 trillion figure is that you can never trace it to a factual cost analysis. Instead it is a large round number that is used to scare people— or when reporters haven’t done their homework. It goes around like a virus too. In January 2004, former Associated Press reporter Paul Recer included it in an article he wrote, but could never identify its source.

Former Columbia Accident Investigation Board panel member Douglas Osheroff made a similar unsubstantiated comment in another Associated Press article by reporter Ted Bridis on 14 June 2004 where he is quoted saying, “Never let it be said that NASA tends to overestimate the cost of its missions,”said Douglas Osheroff, a widely renowned physicist who investigated the Columbia accident. “The cost in present-day dollars …I think it’s going to be one trillion.”Osheroff ‘thinks’it will cost a trillion dollars. Bridis also makes reference to the $1 trillion figure—but never apparently sought to confirm it for himself or ask Osheroff what his source was. A few days after this article appeared Osheroff was one of 48 Nobel laureates who formally endorsed John Kerry.

The net result of this urban myth is that everyone seems to think that a cost estimation was made—by someone, somewhere—that said the new Bush space policy was going to cost $1 trillion when in fact no such estimate has ever actually been derived.