Artemis (NASA moon mission)

rjh01 said:
You must remember that NASA had a near unlimited budget to land someone on the moon. And do it quickly. They were willing to take huge risks to do so. Now the budget is much reduced and safety is a much higher priority.
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According to Wikipeda:

Apollo cost $25.4 billion or approximately $257 billion (2023) using improved cost analysis.​
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Of this amount, $20.2 billion ($149 billion adjusted) was spent on the design, development, and production of the Saturn family of launch vehicles, the Apollo spacecraft, spacesuits, scientific experiments, and mission operations. The cost of constructing and operating Apollo-related ground facilities, such as the NASA human spaceflight centers and the global tracking and data acquisition network, added an additional $5.2 billion ($38.3 billion adjusted).​
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The amount grows to $28 billion ($280 billion adjusted) if the costs for related projects such as Project Gemini and the robotic Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter programs are included.​
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Sources:
An Improved Cost Analysis of the Apollo Program
How much did the Apollo program cost?

Compared to an estimated budget of $93 billion between 2020-2025 for Artemis:

  1. NASA Office of Inspector General (November 15, 2021). NASA's Management of the Artemis Missions (PDF) (Report). NASA. p. 21. Retrieved January 18, 2023. To account for all Artemis costs for FYs 2021 through 2025, including Phase 2 projects like the SLS Block 1B, Mobile Launcher 2, and Gateway, we found that $25 billion should be added to the Artemis Plan's estimated costs, increasing the total costs over this 5-year period to $53 billion. Furthermore, when considering the $40 billion already spent on the Artemis mission from FYs 2012 to 2020, the total projected cost through FY 2025 becomes $93 billion.
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So, not unlimited, but an order of magnitude greater than the Artemis budget. Which is fine. There's no real hurry, no great benefit to be urgently realized. Also, it's not unreasonable to expect the budget to increase with each phase, as work completed paves the way for planning and budgeting new work that builds on what has already been done. Large, complex projects are often impossible to accurately budget in their totality, during the early phases.
 
It may be important to emphasize that the Saturn launch vehicle program was a separate (pre-existing) program and was budgeted separately from the Apollo program. This has more to do with contracting and oversight practice than with engineering. While a similar situation exists between the SLS vehicle program and the Artemis mission programs, the costs are more blurred.

The Artemis II launch is pushed to March. This has more to do with lunar phasing than with engineering timelines. Apollo launches had similar constraints on launch windows.
 
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