NASA’s own retrospective puts the program at $25.4 billion. [1] The Planetary Society rebuilt the figure from NASA’s budget requests and arrived at a similar total, roughly $260 billion in today’s money. [2]
The share is what stands out. In fiscal 1966 NASA spent $5.933 billion while the whole federal government spent $134.532 billion, about 4.4 percent. NASA now gets well under half of one percent. [3][4]
About 400,000 people worked on Apollo at its peak, most for contractors. A program that size leaves a paper trail of contracts, invoices and payrolls that historians still use.
Approved reader comments and ratings appear here when JavaScript is on.