How much money would it take to bring every man woman and child on
this earth to the moon? And by what year could it feasilbly be done?
Provided there is substanital and continual funding (How much would be
necessary per year?) with the current population growth.  Please
include margin of error, set backs, improvements in technology and
accidents. Thank you

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Request for Question Clarification by hedgie-ga on 27 Jun 2005 07:47 PDT

RE:
How much money would it take to bring every man woman and child on
this earth to the moon?
Please clarify: If some people will refuse to go, should we count in
cost of paying them to accept, or perhaps include cost of kidnapping?

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Clarification of Question by badayakazi-ga on 30 Jun 2005 03:29 PDT

Travel there would not be manditory. Though I would assume that there
would need to be launch stations on at least every continent, if not
country.

Within a realistic time frame... in the next thirty years (so that I could go!)

For the sole reason of exploring outerspace.  As short or as long a
trip as time permits.

Thank you!

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Request for Question Clarification by hedgie-ga on 03 Jul 2005 23:36 PDT

I happy to see that you are thinking of mass tourism,
rather then mass deportations,
nevertheless, 
that raises question of the return ticket and cost of stay.

Could you describe in more details what should be included, and in what
currency (USD, Euros, or as suggested in comment
From: bitterandtwisted-ga on 29 Jun 2005 03:42 PDT 
in Joules) it should be costed. Could we just estimate per person cost,
instead of also estimating population size (which really should be a
separate $2 question).
Please make it clear what is a specification and what is just a guess:
e.g. 'A ramp  on each continent' would make it more expensive. It is more
economical to have one Grand Central Station on equator, than many
smaller station at all latitudes ...etc

Thank you for your question.
 
I believe that to answer it well, your question will require more time
and effort than the average amount of time and effort associated with
this price. Here is a link to guidelines about pricing your question,
in the pricing guide: https://answers.google.com/answers/pricing.html

Just looking at current launch costs and population growth rates,
you'd have to spend about $30,000,000 a minute just to keep the
Earth's population static.  I'm basing that on launch costs to Earth
orbit - getting to the moon and surviving there (I assume that's a
requirement?) would increase the costs by a factor of 100? 1000?

Ian G.

12 men have been brought to the moon total cost 25 billion dollars.
(Early 1970s value).
Current earth population 6 billion.  
Now use following adjustments:
- Multiply by 10 to adjust for inflation.
- Divide by 200 to account for improvement in technology and economies of scale
  to currently get people to the moon 
  (and question only asks for price to get them there and not the price to  
  maintain them on the moon or the price to get them back to earth).

  So total price is (25*1000000000*6*1000000000*10)/(12*200) 
  = 625000 trillion US dollars. (1 trillion is 1o to the power of 12)
  
  I will let someone else work out how long this will take
DPRK007

Nice analysis, dprk007-ga.
But let me sum up your data in one sentence.
The total cost to bring the entire population of earth to the Moon is
gazillion bizillion dollars.

Although Dprk's effort was a good one, I must say that it's greatly overestimated. 
$625000 Trillion = $100 Million per person.  

I bet we could find a great government contractor to do it for a mere
$500 Million each :)  Or if we actually went competatively and thought
large scale (sending 1000 people per ship rather than 3) then the
price could fall to around $1 Million each.  That would be $1 Billion
per flight and it would require only 6 million flights...
So if we had 1000 spaceships operational at a time moving at about 500
mph, we're talking about a 50 hour trip to the moon (a distance of
250,000 miles) the 50 hour trip back plus packing and unpacking
time... times 6000 flights per ship
(100 hours traveling + 20 hours packing) X 6000 flights = 720,000
hours which is 82 years.

My guess is:
82 years
$6 Quadrillian   ($6,000,000,000,000,000 or $6,000 Trillian)

Since the world GDP is somewhere around $50 Trillian per year, I doubt
we'll all be moving to the moon anytime soon.

Transportation will not be cheap, but it will be a heck of a lot more
expensive if, after we get them all there, we have to keep 'em alive.

Also, we would have to transport significantly more than 350,000 per
day, just to keep up with new births

I can recall (dimly) a sci fi author presenting something similar
although i think th cost was calculated in terms of the energy needed
and the technology likely to do such an exercise.

the technology discussed was the "space elevator" concept in which a
tethered ribbon of carbon fibre like material was used to create an
elevator to geostationary orbit

with the discovery of carbon nanotubes this idea has been revisited
and people are again discussing the idea

for such a project the economic cost is meaningless as the project
itself and the political commentment to do it would redefine the
global economics and the meaning of money would not be relevant.

it is unclear if you wish everyone to go to the moon for a day trip or
if you want to migrate the whole population.

the day trip would be difficult to imagine but a migration over many
generations would be possible and could be done in a generation very
cheaply

for example you could ban breeding on earth and simply transport sperm
and ovi or fertilised eggs to the moon, thus shifting the population
by the natural birth and death rate within a centurary or so.  Over
that sort of time scale 10 billion eggs sent to the moon would be
fairly cheap.

the idea of a mass exodus is really impossible to cost without more
informaiton on the reasons for going and the time scale available.

Hi there,
A recent figure from NASA places the cost of propelling one kilogram
of mass into space at $20,000.  If you esimate Earths population to be
6 billion and the mean weight to be 55 kg then you have an estimate of
$1.1 million per person.  Totalling $6.6 quadrillion US dollars.  This
is more money than the world could afford.  This would suggest
migrating the human populous to the moon would be infeasible. 
However, if you assume a one way trip these costs can be cut
dramatically.  New technologies are emerging that would allow one to
travel without the consumption of fuel.  Solar sails, tether devices,
electromagnetic launching, etc... It would be realistic to assume that
within the not so distant future inexpensive launch vehicles could be
used to transport cargo (including people) to a space station where
they could be launched in unpropelled shuttle pods to the moons orbit.
 Where they could be transported to the surface.
My biggest problem is sustaining the population once it arrives.  The
moon has few resources.  Meaning Earth would be supplying most things.
 People would need to be on Earth to produce these items.

It is impossible to do this now, within 100-200 years the technology
should exist to transport large amounts of people to the moon.  But
even with the technology the moon could never be completely self
sufficient.

It's even more expensive than that, since people need life support
systems, and don't "pack" very well  - a problem on slave ships in
their day.
And then on the moon it will start getting very crowded, ....

Simply said, it's not happening at ANY one time. It is just not
probable considering our current status. But forget about all of that,
Moon living will probably occur anyway. Look forward to it.

Expanded:

Earth is, and will eventually run out of space, thus spawning the idea
of traveling to the moon. An option to move to the moon can occur (not
the, LETS ALL GO TO THE MOON IDEA). It'll just be another place to
move. Kinda like a really expensive Country Club, in space! = )

I can see it now. USPS Space Parcel Post.

Great Idea! I have used extensive calculations using various sysyems
and i have found the answer to be 47.

Also there would be not much of earth left as we would have to convert
it all into fuel (or use a very large bit of rope). better give it a
miss perhaps...