U.S. Government Funding of Major Space Goals: A Historical Perspective

There is a widely held opinion among many in the public that an American-led human return to the Moon must cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. That opinion is based on nearly 50 years of evidence from NASA's three major attempts to acquire approval for another Apollo-style mission for sending humans to deep space. This article provides a short history of those major attempts, each of which used NASA's traditional cost-plus government-led approach to sending humans to deep space.