Cost in Space

I was having a discussion with a colleague about the recent Chinese docking mission. To be honest, it was less of a discussion and more of me helplessly cornered in the breakroom trying to pour myself some coffee while being bombarded with his displeasure at… at…

You know something? I am not quite sure what he was upset about. Whatever it was, it had something to do with “the Red Chinese”, China’s space program, taking over the moon, and something about starving babies.

He might have had some derogatory things to gravelly slur about the Washington Redskins and Obama-care as well. He was kind of all over the map and I wasn’t really listening but Mr. “Hey You Kids Get Off My Lawn” did get me thinking about the cost of doing business in space.

If you go to Wikipedia you see that there are an awful lot of countries out there with at least some ability to send stuff into space. Let's just pick some: China, Europe (ESA), India, Russia, UK, and the USA.

Let’s see how much they spend per year:

Wow. That’s quite a spread. But, like most people, I can’t really wrap my head around really big numbers – after a point they become meaningless. Let’s divide by the number of people in each country and see what we get:

Hmm. This chart reminds me that, about 10 years ago, you couldn’t read a mainstream (whatever that means) news article on the Chinese space program without the author (or editor) inserting a paragraph like you see below [USA Today 10/01/2003]:

Skeptics say an expensive manned space program is a political vanity project that a developing nation can ill afford. Though China has enjoyed impressive economic growth for a decade, annual per capita income remains just $800. "I frankly think it's a waste of money. It's kind of a bread-and-circus routine," says James Mulvenon, a China-watcher at a Rand Corp.'s office in Arlington, Va.

For whatever reason, you see less of that talk nowadays.

But money is money. How much of an impact does this yearly cost have on the wallet of your average citizen? Let’s divide the above numbers by the yearly income per person and see what we get.

Well these are sure small numbers… You could think of it as a significantly less than one percent “Space Program Tax” across the board. That’s really not a lot of bread, is it, now?

Right?

Well, let’s change the graph above into something we can all put our hands on. Using my best guesses for current-ish local prices (based on averages I quickly gleaned from Google searches), let’s convert the numbers above into the true “coin of the realm”: food.

Even taking account my sloppy averaging on the cost of various types of bread in places around the world it seems like my colleague's “starving babies” argument against China having a space program is a little exaggerated.

Oh, I suppose you could argue that no country should have a space program unless every one of its citizen’s is well fed. Ok… fair enough. Should literacy also be 100%? What about health care? Social security? What is the cutoff for crime rate? Should there be a set minimum average income per person, too? Should it be dependent on what the goal of each space mission is? Is there a monetary value you can place on national pride? If so, how much gold per person is that?

I am not trying to imply a viewpoint one way or the other, FWIW. I am simply not smart enough to answer any of the questions above. Any way these questions are answered, though, there is one thing for certain: there is no such thing as a free launch.