
Israel Shoots for the Moon with Privately Funded Spacecraft - jaboutboul
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/18/middleeast/israel-spacecraft-beresheet-launch-intl/index.html
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wardbradt
> The total cost of the program, raised from private donations, is $100
> million, a small fraction of the billions of dollars invested in the US
> space program.

It is unclear if this is referring to current or past (space race era)
investment in the US space program. Regardless, I think it is an unfair
comparison.

Given NASA's current goals (_not_ moon landings) compared to the simple goal
of this program (a moon landing), it is unreasonable to compare the two
programs in the present day. If they are comparing the investment of SpaceIL
today versus the US in the 60s, it again seems fallacious as the cost of a
moon landing today is definitely much less than the cost during the space
race.

SpaceIL did not have to conduct research in areas which the US and Soviet
space programs did have to because SpaceIL could rely on these past programs'
research. To further compare the Apollo missions to this, the US space program
launched their own crafts, they were not able to lessen the cost by
contracting SpaceX.

