To the Moon on a Budget

The climax of 'A Girl like Alice' is her privately funded flight to the moon. Unsurprisingly, some readers thought that this was the most 'far fetched' part of the plot, from both the technical and financial standpoint. However, except for the moon ship, 'Beta Star', itself, all the space hardware is real and in frequent use, by the Russians and the European Space Agency (ESA).

In any space enterprise, the most difficult part is to get personnel and hardware out of the earth's atmosphere and into orbit. From then on things get much easier. Outside of the USA, there are two rockets currently available. Arianne and Soyuz. Arianne can lift 20 tonnes into LEO (Low Earth Orbit). i.e. approximately 230 miles up. While Soyuz is the most reliable means of delivering crews.

Its safety record is unsurpassed with over 1700 successful launches, compared to the NASA Space Shuttle's 120 launches and the loss of 14 lives, in two accidents.
My moon ship had to weigh at least 60 tonnes for it to have sufficient fuel to travel from earth orbit to lunar orbit and back to earth orbit again, including an excursion to the moon's surface. To make the story work, I had to assume that Alice's company had developed a new rocket fuel, with about a 50% better specific impulse than currently available, (specific impulse is the amount of thrust delivered per pound of fuel). I also imagined a new design of super high efficiency, deep space, rocket motor. I called it, Jules Verne, after the famous science fiction writer.

You may ask how this could be done within my 2 billion dollar budget? This is my calculation:

The Russians charge space tourists $30 million for a seat on Soyuz, this includes a week's stay on the International Space Station (ISS). Anyone interested should contact Space Adventures Inc: http://www.spaceadventures.com/index.cfm. Incidentally, I notice that SA are advertising a trip around the moon for $100 million. What a bargain! ESA ask about $120 million to launch a commercial satellite into geostationary orbit: http://www.arianespace.com/index/index.asp .

So, the budget = $2000 m

Cost for sending 3 person crew into orbit on Soyuz = 3 x 30 = $90 million.

Cost of 4 launches for Arianne to deliver the components of the moon ship, and orbital adaptor  = 4 x 120 =$480m

Total launch costs = $480 + 90 = 570m

Therefore, amount available for design, development, manufacture and test of 3 moon ships inc. one for ground test:  = 2000m - 570 = $1430 m

OK, the engineering costs are a little optimistic, but I'm still sure that it could be done for a great deal less than NASA have told President Obama! For an insight into the inefficiencies of that bloated organization, I recommend, 'Riding Rockets', by Space Shuttle astronaut, Mike Mullane: http://bit.ly/d0aS5 .

For those who want a taste of space flight, but have a more limited budget, lol, visit Virgin Galactic: http://www.virgingalactic.com/ .

Anyway, why not read the book. It's fun! BookBuzzr>