Science: Ticket to the Moon

Singsong, merry-go-round, Here we go off to the moon-oh.

The price of a ticket to the moon, in the children's nursery rhyme, was a single foundling penny and the method of transportation a kite. For the rocket-borne commercial space traveler of the future, the tab will be considerably higher—but still astonishingly low. In a detailed cost analysis presented to last week's international space symposium in Stockholm, three Douglas Aircraft Co. engineers estimated that a scant $500 should one day cover basic costs of one passenger's round-trip transportation, by nuclear spaceship, to the moon. The...