> 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.