Moon Math

[infrogmation]

Let's see...

Have I got this right? Mathematics never was my strong point...

Cost of Apollo program: $25.4 billion

Amount of moon material brought back by Apollo program: 381.7 kg

25,400,000,000 / 381,700

Works out to about $60,540 spent per gram of moon brought back, no?


Going rate for Apollo moon rock on open market: almost $5million per gram

So if that value held, NASA would have a stockpile of moon with an estimated street value of some $19085 Billion...

(Yes yes, scarcity; I know that if there was more on the market the price would go down... I was just pondering...)

Comments

[jjjiii]

That logic assumes that the only value of the Apollo missions and the entire space program was to get moon rock. That's just ludicrous.

Obviously, a lot of the research and development that made the moon shot possible made other valuable stuff possible, like killing millions of people with satellite-based lasers, and nuclear powered flying cars, and the memory of shouting "In your face!" and "We're number one" and the "U-S-A" chant at those commie bastards from the old Evil Empire. Things that we couldn't imagine our civilization without today.

Besides, you CAN'T know if moon rock is really worth it until you've shot up with some; it's surprizingly good.

Mooooon!

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

Funny stuff.

"Besides, you CAN'T know if moon rock is really worth it until you've shot up with some; it's surprizingly good."

And if the cops catch you with Moon rock, they don't arrest you, they arrest the rock (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4451764,00.html).

Ejecta

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Not all moon-rock came to Earth via the Apollo program. A lot of moon rock, as well as a lot of Martian rock, has arrived on Earth after being blasted into space by meteoric impact, and gets swept up by Earth's gravity. You could probably spend quite a lot less than $5 million to fly to Antarctica and get quite a lot more than a gram of the moon, and some Mars on the side. Maybe the value's in the lucite, or maybe the moon-chunk witnessed the missing 18 minutes.

Re: Ejecta

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

IIRC, before actual samples were brought back from the moon for comparison, there was debate in the scientific community as to whether the tektites were from the moon or not.

Also, note that 3 unmanned Russian probes brought back .321 kg of moon. I imagine that robot probes would probably be more cost efficient per gram of moon than manned missions.