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Originally Posted by goof2
The numbers I have seen are about $400 million Canadian for Canada and $17.1 billion for America. That isn't 1/24th.
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I pulled the numbers for 2008, which stated something like $8B as the NASA budget for that year. Canada's space budget for 2008 was about $350M.
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A factory can automate turning out cars because they build hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of them. The more repetition in a process the more it can be automated. There is very little in building space vehicles that is repetitive.
Building a space vehicle requires extremely close tolerances and rechecking those tolerances multiple times. Until telepresence enables someone to turn a torque wrench, use a set of calipers, or manually check circuits it will only have a limited effect on reducing the number of people required to actually be present.
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Telepresence allows performing surgery a hundred miles away. It can certainly be used to match sub assemblies. The fine tuning is where the human presence comes in. The point is that you don't need a thousand people on the moon in order to get the job done.
I'm not thinking tomorrow, but rather 50 years in the future.