AUDIO:

POSSIBLE TOPICS:

1. VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information;
2. Harris County Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum seeks resources, still assessing midterm elections;
3. Harris County’s election missteps fuel GOP lawsuit and calls for investigation;
4. Texas lawmakers target property taxes, election fraud and transgender people in new legislation ahead of 2023 session;
5. Broward [Cty, Florida] Superintendent Vickie Cartwright Fired by School Board;
6. US intelligence official says Russian missiles killed two people in Poland; waves of missile strikes across Ukraine as G20 leaders meet in Bali;
7. Artemis I mission takes flight in historic leap forward for NASA’s moon program;
8. NASA’s massive moon rocket will cost taxpayers billions more than projected, auditor warns Congress;
9. How much did the Apollo program cost?;
10. More.

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) on KPFT-HD2, Houston’s Community Station. You can also hear the show:

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Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.

• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.
• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

1. Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter InformationTEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
   1. Harris County “Vote-By-Mail’ Application for 2022
      1. Fort bend County Elections/Voter Registration Machine takes you to the proper link
      2. GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
      3. Liberty County Elections (Liberty County, TX)
      4. Montgomery County (TX) Elections
      5. Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
      6. Waller County (TX) Elections
      7. Chambers County (TX) Elections
      8. For personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information, Consider visiting Vote.ORG.   Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
      9. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
      10. HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers, HARRIS COUNTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
          1. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
          2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
          3. Current utility bill
          4. Bank statement
          5. Government check
          6. Paycheck
          7. A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
          8. You may vote early by-mail if:You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
             1. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
             2. Sick or disabled;
             3. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
             4. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
             5. Make sure you are registered:
             6. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
             7. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
             8. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
             9. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
          9. You can track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking
2. Harris County Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum seeks resources, still assessing midterm elections; By Rachel Carlton | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 5:49 PM, Nov 15, 2022 CST, Updated 5:49 PM Nov 15, 2022 CST
   1. Harris County Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum addressed the Harris County Commissioners Court during the Nov. 15 meeting to discuss Election Day issues, calling for a “revamped” communications system and additional resources. The Nov. 8 election was Tatum’s first in this role.
   2. Entering the courtroom after an intense public comment session, which included some speakers from a protest outside the county building and rousing applause following numerous speakers, Tatum was able to speak without interruption during his time at the podium.
   3. In his election recap to the court, he acknowledged that at least one voting center—confirmed as BakerRipley in East End by his office to Community Impact—opened significantly late. …
   4. Late starts at several locations prompted a lawsuit and subsequent court order on the evening of Election Day that kept polls open an extra hour until 8 p.m.; the Texas Supreme Court later issued a stay on that order, requiring that ballots cast between 7-8 p.m. be segregated and not tabulated in the final count.
   5. During the meeting, Tatum said over 2,100 provisional ballots had been cast in that time period. He added his office is in the process of counting those ballots and will complete a full assessment of the elections once the tabulation process is complete.
   6. Tatum asked the court to canvass the election results Nov. 22. At least one race will go to a runoff Dec. 13, according to Tatum.
   7. Tatum cited a breakdown in the communications system between the election judges, his office’s call center and the technicians dispatched to perform maintenance on voting machines, noting one instance in which an election judge informed him that they had attempted to reach out to a technician to no avail, while the call center had indicated it had indeed dispatched one.
   8. “Early assessment suggests to me that system replacements are in dire need,” Tatum said. “We must take a deep dive into the voting system operations. … There is no real visibility within a call from the judge to a response from a technician to a completion of whatever the issue was that occurred.”
   9. His 20-minute testimony also included a plea to provide his office with more resources beyond one-time funding to run elections in the nation’s third-largest county.
   10. ANDREW: Obviously elections in Harris need more resources. This county has more people living in it than 32 US states and territories. More resources will always help. I think, and this touches a bit on the next article, that the main things to investigate here are why so many polling places opened late, and also why election law allowed the Texas Supreme Court to stay the extension of voting hours, which seems like a logical remedy to a late start to me and something the law should provide for.
3. Harris County’s election missteps fuel GOP lawsuit and calls for investigation; Scattered paper ballot shortages and late openings of polling places were among the glitches that prompted calls for scrutiny from statewide Republican officials. by Alexa Ura | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Nov. 15, 20223 hours ago
   1. Greg Abbott on Monday called for an investigation into problems voters encountered on Election Day last week, pointing to late polling place openings, paper ballot shortages and staffing issues. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick backed that call …
   2. The county’s election administrator has admitted some shortcomings and promised a full assessment once workers wrap up their vote-counting duties. The county has made missteps in several recent elections, but the clash is also the latest entry in a long series of political battles over how the state’s most populous county runs its elections that ramped up in recent years after Republicans lost control of the county.
   3. “The allegations of election improprieties in our state’s largest county may result from anything ranging from malfeasance to blatant criminal conduct,” Abbott said in a statement Monday. …
   4. The governor called for the involvement of the secretary of state, attorney general and the Texas Rangers in investigating “allegations of improprieties in the way that the 2022 elections were conducted in Harris County.” Though the governor raised the specter of criminality, he offered no specific allegations of criminal conduct in the election, nor is there evidence of widespread fraud.
   5. While election workers are still processing provisional ballots, Tatum said his office was in the process of contacting each election judge, who oversee polling places, to inform a post-election report that will provide more detail on the scope of election day issues — and the additional resources that may be needed to ensure the county’s 782 polling locations can be properly run. …
   6. The general election was the first contest overseen by Tatum …
   7. The fumbles prompted a lawsuit by the Harris County GOP, which this week again sued the county and Tatum arguing it violated various provisions of the Texas Election Code. The party’s allegations include paper shortages that disenfranchised voters and the improper handling of spoiled ballots and instances in which a voter’s two-page ballot could not be adequately scanned.
   8. Harris County recently switched to new voting machines, replacing some of the oldest machines in the state and aligning the county with new state rules requiring counties to use machines that leave a paper trail. …
   9. On Tuesday, Commissioner Tom Ramsey called for both an audit of the election and a town hall to collect concerns and issues experienced by voters.
   10. “We have a problem in Harris County,” Ramsey said. “We do not know how to run an election.”
   11. Harris County is already subject to a full post-election audit by the state. The secretary of state’s office earlier this year selected Harris for review as part of a new audit process put into place by sweeping voting legislation Republicans passed last year. …
   12. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, Harris County elections have long been known for slow reporting of election results. More populous than roughly half of the states, the county is Texas’ biggest and typically has the most votes to process. Voting materials, including ballot boxes, must also be transported across the county’s nearly 2,000 square miles back to its election headquarters.
   13. The county has also regularly hosted partisan battles over its elections, including the creation of an elections administrator office and voting initiatives like a move to countywide voting that allows voters to cast ballots at any polling place in the county on election day.
   14. Harris was also at the center of sweeping Republican legislation passed in 2021 to further restrict the state’s voting process and narrow local control of elections. That new law, known as Senate Bill 1, banned methods championed by Harris County in the first major election during the pandemic — 24-hour voting and drive-thru voting — that were disproportionately used by voters of color.
   15. On Tuesday, County Judge Lina Hidalgo … vowed the county would participate in the investigations, but she pushed back on the state’s decision to “single out” Harris County “for the kind of harassment and political stunt that we’re seeing.” …
   16. MIKE: I believe that the new County systems have only been in service since 2021, after replacing systems that were almost 20 years old. The old system had no paper trail, so miscalculating the need for paper ballots should not be a shock in an off-year election with very high turnout. For Governor Abbott to claim, “anything ranging from malfeasance to blatant criminal conduct,” should make Abbott guilty of criminal hyperbole in the first degree.
   17. ANDREW: Recognizing that the county didn’t choose to use voting machines, I think there would have been fewer technical issues if most people had used direct paper ballots, with a few accessible voting machines at each polling place. Voting should be accessible to and secure for everyone, but I think software-based accessible voting machines are over-complicated and too prone to errors and manipulation. To be secure, I say that accessible voting machines should mark paper ballots purely mechanically and have no networking hardware or physical data ports. Computer counting is fine, as hand counting can be done later, but I think paper ballots are far more secure and reliable than electronic ones.
4. Texas lawmakers target property taxes, election fraud and transgender people in new legislation ahead of 2023 session; Thousands of bills are expected to be filed for the legislative session that begins in January. Lawmakers are expected to have a budget surplus when they return to Austin. by Sneha Dey, Alex Nguyen and Eleanor Klibanoff | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Nov. 14, 2022 Updated: 6 PM Central
   1. Texas lawmakers won’t gavel in for the new legislative session until January, but they got their first chance to file bills Monday.
   2. By 1 p.m., Texas legislators filed more than 800 bills pertaining to an array of matters. Thousands of pieces of legislation are filed each session, but most never make it into law. The first day of bill filing, though, can shed light on legislators’ priorities and what battles could be shaping up in Austin next year. Republicans continue to hold both chambers — and narrowly expanded their control of the Legislature.
   3. When the 88th legislative session convenes, the state is expected to have an unprecedented amount of funds at its disposal. The state comptroller forecast that there will be at least an extra $27 billion in the two-year budget compared with the last regular legislative session. Lawmakers will also see an increase in … the rainy day fund.
   4. Filing early means bills will typically get a low number. But the lowest numbers are reserved for the highest-priority bills set by the House speaker and lieutenant governor. …
   5. Here’s a look at some of the notable bills filed Monday, which will be updated regularly.
   6. EDUCATION: Two Houston Democrats have filed legislation pushing for more inclusion of ethnic studies in schools. …
   7. [Democrats] filed a bill that would change how the state funds Texas’ 1,204 public school districts and open-enrollment charters. [House Bill 31 would] fund schools based on their average enrollment. Currently, schools are funded on their average daily attendance. …
   8. [A Republican bill] would require publishers to assign content ratings to books that they want to sell to schools. The scores, …similar to movie ratings, would place restrictions on which books students can access depending on their age. … The legislation follows a year of rapid book banning in the state. …
   9. GUNS: [Two Democrats] filed similar bills that would require sales of multiple firearms to be reported to law enforcement agencies. [One bill] includes the sale of multiple magazines [and] would require the Texas Department of Public Safety to inform the sheriff where the purchaser resides. …
   10. Abortion: … A group of Democrats have filed two bills that would … add an exception to the ban in the case of rape. It would not require the pregnant patient to file a police report, provide forensic evidence or prosecute the crime to obtain an abortion under this exception. Several Republicans have said they would consider supporting rape or incest exceptions. …
   11. [Another bill] filed by Democrats, would allow abortions to save the life of the pregnant patient; to preserve the patient’s physical or mental health; or in cases of lethal fetal anomalies or other fetal conditions that are incompatible with life “without extraordinary medical interventions.” The bill would require those decisions to be made by a doctor and patient, not a medical review board.
   12. Republicans are expected to file bills this session to tighten and ensure enforcement of existing abortion laws. [One Republican bill] would stop Texas municipalities from helping people pay for out-of-state abortions. …
   13. LGBTQ Texans’ rights: Texas Republicans have targeted transgender people several times in recent sessions. Already, there is a wave of bills aimed at gender-affirming health care.
   14. [Two Republican bills] would expand the state’s definition of child abuse to include providing gender-affirming health care under the guidance of a doctor or mental health care provider. … [They] would also criminalize gender-affirming health care [including] offering various gender-affirming procedures and treatments for children, including puberty blockers and testosterone or estrogen doses. …
   15. Energy: Republican lawmakers filed bills that would make building renewable energy facilities more difficult. For example, a bill … would increase setback requirements on the location of wind turbines and allow county commissioner courts to create designated areas for wind turbines and prohibit them elsewhere in the county. …
   16. Democratic lawmakers filed bills that seek to harden energy and water infrastructure to endure severe weather events, some of which … are enhanced by climate change. … [P]roposed bills that would [also] direct regulators to provide funds for public water supply systems to acquire backup power generators in economically stressed areas and develop an alert system for boil water notices.
   17. Health care: [Two Democrats] have filed bills to expand postpartum Medicaid to 12 months. House Republicans have called this a top priority, particularly in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
   18. Last year, the House voted to give new moms access to Medicaid for a year after they gave birth, but the Senate reduced that time period to six months. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has said that the state’s application is “not approvable”; applications for 12-month extensions were automatically approved through the American Rescue Plan.
   19. [A Democratic] House Bill … would make menstrual supplies like tampons and pads tax-exempt. [T]his year, Gov. Greg Abbott and other key Republicans have signaled their support for eliminating the “tampon tax.”
   20. Voting and elections: [A Republican] House Bill … would bump the penalty for election fraud from a Class A misdemeanor to a state jail felony. …
   21. Similar [Republican] legislation … would increase penalties for illegal voting to a second-degree felony.
   22. [A Democratic] Senate Bill … would require counties to put polling sites on university and college campuses with at least 5,000 students, … at least two voting locations on campuses with 10,000 students, plus one extra site for every additional 10,000 students. The lack of on-campus polling locations is a big barrier to youth voter turnout in Texas, on top of strict voting laws. …
   23. Property taxes: State lawmakers have so far filed dozens of bills seeking to tame Texas’ property taxes — which are among the highest in the nation because that’s largely how public schools are financed and the state doesn’t have an income tax. Republican leaders have said they want to use the massive budget surplus to help lower homeowners’ tax bills.
   24. [A Republican] bill … would abolish school districts’ maintenance and operations tax, which they use to pay teachers’ salaries and day-to-day expenses. … The idea of getting rid of the M&O tax has gained traction in Republican circles this year. …
   25. Another [Republican] proposal would place limits on how much appraisal districts can raise a single-family home’s value. [A Democrat] filed a bill requiring appraisers to only value a home based on the value of neighboring homes, a proposal aimed at preventing displacement in gentrifying neighborhoods.
   26. [A Republican House bill] directs the state comptroller to automatically put half of any budget surplus at the end of each biennium into the Texas Education Agency to help reduce property taxes. Republican leaders have said they want to use a massive budget surplus to help lower Texas homeowners’ property taxes.
   27. Opioid testing: [A bipartisan Senate bill would] remove the penalty for those who manufacture, possess, deliver or use testing equipment for identifying fentanyl. Similar bills are being pushed individually in [the Texas House]. Possession of drug testing supplies is currently punishable by a $500 fine and distribution of drug testing supplies is punishable by up to a year in jail.
   28. ANDREW: A decidedly mixed bag… if Democrats had a chance in hell of getting anything passed.
   29. ANDREW: I like the bills increasing education funding, expanding abortion allowances, increasing the emergency readiness of utility infrastructure, expanding Medicaid, eliminating the “tampon tax”, mandating college campus polling places, fighting gentrification in property valuation, and decriminalizing drug testing supplies.
   30. ANDREW: I think the book rating system could work if it wasn’t going to be skewed in favor of conservative views, and that the best way to shift education funding off of property taxes would be to fund schools equitably at the state level, but somehow I don’t expect cutting the M&O tax will accomplish that.
   31. ANDREW: To me, the gun bills are a bad idea because giving police any information without exhaustive legal review first is fascistic; House Bill 61 restricting local abortion spending is another example of the Republican philosophy of “local control as long as it hurts people”, and both it and the bill to make it child abuse to give a transgender kid essential medical care represent dangerous attempts to practice medicine by unlicensed, openly bigoted lawmakers. But to Republicans, keeping their social control in place is far more important than anyone’s health or safety. And of course they’re still blaming renewables for the Big Freeze and trying to make it illegal to vote for anyone other than a Republican.
5. Broward Superintendent Vickie Cartwright Fired by School Board; Her firing comes before four Gov. DeSantis-appointed board members leave the job next week to be replaced by elected members. By NBC 6 | NBCMIAMI.COM | Published November 14, 2022, Updated 6 hours ago
   1. The Broward School Board voted to fire Superintendent Vickie Cartwright. … Cartwright was fired with a 5-4 vote after a surprise motion by Daniel Foganholi, one of the [five] school board members who were appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. …
   2. Just three weeks ago, the board gave Cartwright 90 days to address any concerns after an hours-long special meeting debating her future with the board.
   3. Her firing comes before four DeSantis-appointed board members [including Foganholi] leave the job next week to be replaced by elected members.
   4. Cartwright was hired as interim superintendent in July 2021 and was named permanent superintendent in February. …
   5. MIKE: This is part of a pattern by DeSantis, wielding his disproportionate power as governor, aided and abetted by a Republican-dominated legislature, to shape all of Florida in his image by hook or by crook.
6. US intelligence official says Russian missiles killed two people in Poland; waves of missile strikes across Ukraine as G20 leaders meet in Bali; By Samantha Lock, Martin Belam, Isobel Koshiw and Léonie Chao-Fong | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Tue 15 Nov 2022 14.31 EST, First published on Mon 14 Nov 2022 19.50 EST
   1. A senior US intelligence official said Russian missiles crossed into Nato member Poland, killing two people. Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki has convened an urgent meeting of a committee for national security and defence affairs, the government spokesman Piotr Müller said on Twitter. …
   2. MIKE: According to COM at 4:30 AM CT, “Poland said it was Russian-made, but US officials said initial findings indicated it was fired by Ukrainian air defences.”
   3. MIKE: Rather than cite specific articles, I’m going to speak to what I know and my speculations, and how it might involve NATO.
   4. MIKE: Poland requests a NATO Article 4 meeting. Article 4 requires a meeting of NATO members for consultation when any member nation requests it. Article 5 is the part that says that an attack on the soil of one member is considered an attack on all members. The only time that has been invoked was by the Europeans of NATO after 9/11/2001, when the World Trade Center was attacked. So far, Article 5 has not been invoked in the Polish incident.
   5. MIKE: As of this writing early Wednesday morning, they only thing that seems agreed upon is that the missile that struck 17 miles inside Poland was Russian-made. Russian-made weapons are used by both Russia and Ukraine. Currently, it seems the missile may have been from Ukrainian air defenses.
   6. MIKE: Other possibilities include a Russian missile being knocked of course by Ukrainian air defenses, or even a Ukrainian anti-missile missile that somehow went off course.
   7. MIKE: By the time you hear this, we may at least know for sure what kind of missile hit Poland. How a Ukrainian air defense missile got 17 miles inside Poland will be interesting.
   8. ANDREW: To me, this is a reminder that the longer war goes on, the more risk there is to civilians– and friendly troops. I think that no matter how one wants this war to end, we should all want to see it end sooner rather than later. My view is that working together peacefully is the best way to make that happen.
7. Artemis I mission takes flight in historic leap forward for NASA’s moon program; By Jackie Wattles and Ashley Strickland | CNN | Updated 3:48 AM EST, Wed November 16, 2022
   1. The historic Artemis I mission took flight in the early hours of Wednesday morning after months of anticipation. The milestone event kicked off a journey that will send an uncrewed spacecraft around the moon, paving the way for NASA to return astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time in half a century.
   2. The towering, 322-foot-tall (98-meter-tall) Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket lit its engines at 1:47 a.m. ET. It emitted up to 9 million pounds (4.1 million kilograms) of thrust to haul itself off the launchpad in Florida and into the air, streaking vibrantly across the night sky.
   3. Atop the rocket was the Orion spacecraft, a gumdrop-shaped capsule that broke away from the rocket after reaching space. Orion is designed to carry humans, but its passengers for this test mission are of the inanimate variety, including some mannequins collecting vital data to help future live crews. …
   4. This mission also marks the debut flight of the SLS rocket as the most powerful ever to reach Earth’s orbit, boasting 15% more thrust than the Saturn V rocket that powered NASA’s 20th century moon landings. …
8. NASA’s massive moon rocket will cost taxpayers billions more than projected, auditor warns Congress; By Michael Sheetz (@thesheetztweetz) | CNBC.COM | Published Tue, Mar 1 2022 at 4:07 PM EST, Updated Tue, Mar 1 2022 at 7:40 PM EST
   1. NASA’s auditor didn’t mince words when he told lawmakers … that the space agency’s lunar program is going to cost a ton more per mission than initial projections suggested a decade ago.
   2. “We found that the first four Artemis missions will each cost $4.1 billion per launch, a price tag that strikes us as unsustainable,” NASA Inspector General Paul Martin said during a meeting of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics.
   3. Artemis … represents a series of missions for which the agency is developing its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule, which would deliver astronauts to the moon. …
   4. In 2012, shortly after SLS was announced, NASA officials estimated that each mission would cost about $500 million — with the rocket targeting a 2017 debut. Today, the cost has ballooned eightfold, according to the NASA auditor. [MIKE NOTE: With 30% inflation since then, that number is ~$650 million.]
   5. There are other costs, too. Martin said the $4.1 billion estimate is only for production costs and ground operations, “and does not include development costs required to get the Artemis program to this point in time.” …
   6. Boeing, in a statement to CNBC, [said]the Artemis program is more cost efficient than its Space Shuttle and Apollo predecessors.
   7. “When adjusted for inflation, NASA has developed SLS for a quarter of the cost of the Saturn V and half the cost of the Space Shuttle … for less than the average annual spending on Space Shuttle operations,” [Boeing] said … “… and will continue to become more affordable as the programs transition from development to operations.” …
   8. The climbing cost per launch for SLS is staggering in comparison to another monster rocket in development: SpaceX’s Starship. Starship is the fully reusable rocket that SpaceX is developing, with the goal of creating a vehicle that can carry cargo and people to the moon and Mars. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently estimated that Starship’s development cost would be 5% to 10% of the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket — which, at an inflation-adjusted $50 billion, puts Starship’s development cost at $2.5 billion to $5 billion. …
   9. NASA representatives continue to present SLS and Orion as crucial to a “sustainable” approach re-establishing a human presence on the moon.
   10. But the costs continue to mount. The Inspector General’s recent audit of Artemis found $40 billion has already been spent on the program, with NASA “projected to spend $93 billion on the Artemis effort” through 2025.
   11. [From another article,] … Later in the [same] hearing, [NASA IG] Martin broke down the costs per flight, which will apply to at least the first four launches of the Artemis program: $2.2 billion to build a single SLS rocket, $568 million for ground systems, $1 billion for an Orion spacecraft, and $300 million to the European Space Agency for Orion’s Service Module. NASA, Martin said, had checked and confirmed these figures.
   12. What is striking about these costs is that they do not include the tens of billions of dollars that NASA has already spent developing the Orion spacecraft since 2005 and the Space Launch System rocket since 2011. If one were to amortize development costs over 10 flights of the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, the $4.1 billion figure cited by Martin would easily double.
   13. That figure is far higher than NASA might have hoped. Five years ago, a senior NASA official told Ars Technica that the space agency would like to get its operational costs for a single mission a year down to $2 billion or less. …
   14. Later during the hearing, [a House member] asked whether the incremental costs of flying more than one Artemis mission a year would bring the cost down. Martin said he did not know for sure. Moreover, NASA is not planning to fly more than one Artemis mission a year …
   15. MIKE: As I recall, the original idea behind SLS made perfect sense as a way to develop a Saturn V-class rocket relatively inexpensively by basing it on the technology already proven in the Space Shuttle. Use derivatives of the Shuttle main engines, and then add a segment or two to the solid rocket boosters (SRBs). Voila! Big rocket on the cheap. To a non-engineer like me, that made perfect sense. Apparently, it did to Congress and NASA, too. But somehow, it hasn’t worked out that way. Apparently, scaling up Shuttle tech was harder than it looked. The Orion capsule must have been deceptive, too. It looked like a much bigger Apollo spacecraft, but apparently, as Buster Crabbe once aid in an old commercial, “That’s where the sim-you-larity ends.”
   16. MIKE: So, let’s do some comparative math and see if this is as horrible as it sounds: How much did the Apollo program cost? | PLANETARY.ORG | Written ca. 2020
   17. The United States spent $28 billion to land men on the Moon between 1960 and 1973, or approximately $280 billion when adjusted for inflation. Spending peaked in 1966, three years before the first Moon landing. The total amount spent on NASA during this period was $49.4 billion ($482 billion adjusted [over 13 years, or about $37-40 billion/year in 2020-ish dollars]).

Project Apollo, 1960 – 1973	Actual	Inflation Adjusted (ca. 2020)
Spacecraft	$8.1 billion	$81 billion
Launch Vehicles	$9.4 billion	$96 billion
Development & Operations	$3.1 billion	$26 billion
Direct Project Costs	$20.6 billion	$204 billion
Ground Facilities, Salaries, & Overhead	$5.2 billion	$53 billion
Total Project Apollo	$25.8 billion	$257 billion
Robotic Lunar Program	$907 million	$10 billion
Project Gemini	$1.3 billion	$14 billion
Total Lunar Effort	$28 billion	$280 billion

ANDREW: I think when you compare the costs of the Apollo program to even the wildest projections of the cost of the Artemis program and account for inflation, Artemis is a very reasonable cost to accomplish the same and more as Apollo did. Besides, we could always take money from the defense budget if need be. Space is good! Public space is even better! We should spend public money on good things, and public space is a good thing.

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