Moon shot or Iran war?

As we were watching the launch of Artemis II on Wednesday, my wife asked me how much money this jaunt around the moon would cost the US taxpayers, when we have so many unmet other priorities. Before I go any further, please remember that we’re talking about money the United States doesn't have and will pile up onto our soon-to-be $40 trillion debt. 

The answer is over $4 billion a ride. If we look at the four missions from I to IV, they’ll amount to some $16.4 billion based on NASA’s Inspector General estimate. This figure reflects per‑mission operating cost (SLS + Orion + ground systems) and does not include the massive development costs of the Artemis program as a whole. 

Overall, the total cost, with each mission should amount to about $100 billion if we were to stay on budget. Artemis is essentially rebuilding the entire US deep‑space exploration stack from scratch and including new heavy‑lift rockets (SLS), a deep‑space crew vehicle (Orion), Lunar infrastructure (Gateway, landers), new ground systems and long‑term lunar operations planning. 

As always is the case in these projects, expect the budgeted $93 billion to cost Americans well over $100 billion… 

Now we can contrast that with the war in Iran, where the “excursion” as Trump likes to call his belligerent action, has already cost us $30 to $40 billion depending on the estimates (not factoring the heavy economic consequences worldwide), not including 3 to 5,000 dead and property damage on the Iranian side, and it’s far from over. 

So when I compare these two expenditures, I’d take space exploration any day if I had to choose between this and an unnecessary war.