Meanwhile, back at the Mars Science Laboratory rover

On Feb 2, 8:27*am, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article f43be8ea-e7d2-4183-a496-06d409859222
@o21g2000prn.googlegroups.com, says...





On Feb 2, 1:16*am, Fred J. McCall wrote:
The Planetary Society web site gives the following cost breakdown:

http://www.planetary.org/explore/top...mars_explorati....

Mission cost

Total: About $850 million
Spacecraft and instrument development: $645 million
Launch: $100 million
Mission operations and science processing: $75 million

Seems I was high on my estimate of launch costs, which left me low on
vehicle development and production cost.

built as a production run of say 50 i wonder what what the cost would
be. given the design is very robust.

Launch costs will still be about $100 million each. *Maybe, if the
design didn't require any tweaks to the design due to mission failures,
AND you were very good at reducing costs, you could get the cost of
building each spacecraft down to $200 million each. *Operations (and a
small extension) to each mission would be about $100 million each (if
you want quality science, I don't seee operations costs dropping at
all). *So maybe a total of $400 million per spacecraft to build, launch,
and operate. *If they go way beyond their design lifetimes, mission
extensions could add another $100 million each (average) to the costs
for a total of $500 million each.

Total program costs for 50 wouuld be $20 billion to $25 billion. *

There is NO FRACKING WAY Congress and the Administration would ever
approve a $20 billion to $25 billion unmanned Mars program that does
essentially the same mission (at a different location) 50 times.

Sorry Bob, but you're still living in Bob Haller Fantasy Land.

Jeff
--
" Solids are a branch of fireworks, not rocketry. :-) :-) ", Henry
Spencer 1/28/2011

I'm certain that China and India could manage the same or better
results at ten cents on the dollar.

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