MSL Cost Caps and de-scoping - Sept '07 |
MSL Cost Caps and de-scoping - Sept '07 |
Sep 21 2007, 12:57 PM
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#16
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Member Group: Members Posts: 267 Joined: 5-February 06 Member No.: 675 |
It does seem fishy that Dr. Stern found the money to design and add a sample cache to MSL at the same time there wasn't enough to finish an already approved instrument. Perfectly logical if you're an administrator whose success is measured by the number of missions you fly, not by their scientific return. Making a cache almost guarantees funding for a mission to go fetch the cache.Steve |
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Sep 21 2007, 01:15 PM
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#17
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14432 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Or - if you look at it another way - having a cache eliminates the need for a scientific rover when doing sample return, and simply a simple rover to collect the sample and return it to the MAV.
Doug |
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Sep 21 2007, 05:48 PM
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#18
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Member Group: Members Posts: 242 Joined: 21-December 04 Member No.: 127 |
Exactly. My comment wasn't to be snarky...I think there is a very good argument that the science return from a sample return mission that collects the best bits of MSL rocks would be greatly superior to a sample return mission that cannot be initiated until the samples are collected.
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Sep 21 2007, 08:51 PM
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#19
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 50 Joined: 7-July 06 From: Selden, NY Member No.: 960 |
I think that the total amount of money available is only part of the equation. The other part is the money allocated for each instrument and how much you're willing to allow overruns. By the looks of it ChemCam is pretty far over budget and finally Stern just said "Enough already." Don't get me wrong, I think losing ChemCam would be a tremendous blow to MSL--especially its remote sensing capabilities. But you have to at least give Stern credit for having a consistent philosophy when it comes to funding science with a limited pot of money. In some sense, he gets paid to make tough decisions.
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Sep 21 2007, 09:27 PM
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#20
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2511 Joined: 13-September 05 Member No.: 497 |
By the looks of it ChemCam is pretty far over budget... What's your source on that? All the news articles say is that there is a $75M overrun. It doesn't say where it is, and since $75M is more than the entire developmental budget for the payload (see the 2007 budget), do you think it's likely to be all ChemCam's overrun? Disclaimer: this message is entirely based on data from public sources. -------------------- Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.
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Sep 22 2007, 03:43 AM
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#21
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Member Group: Members Posts: 234 Joined: 8-May 05 Member No.: 381 |
"Making a cache almost guarantees funding for a mission to go fetch the cache."
Actually, I was looking at the opposite point of view, that a Mars sample return mission may never take place, due to its $2-3 billion cost, and the fact that there will always be a subgenre of the environmentalists who will say that even an infinitesmal risk of introducing Martian microbes to the Earth's biosphere is unacceptable under any circumstances (I am not one of those people, BTW). I remember many years ago when the baseline was for an unmanned Mars mission to return its sample to Earth orbit, then be brought aboard the space station for initial analysis and a long quarantine as a safety enhancement. Because of the obvious higher cost of that scenario, nobody talks about it anymore. (I even remember a proposal to return the sample to a manned lunar base). My point is that there will always be some opposition to an unmanned Mars sample return mission, and combined with the high price, it will be all too easy for policticians to keep pushing it off to the indefinite future. Putting a sample cache on MSL when there is no approved sample return mission could turn out to be a complete waste of precious weight and money the project obviously can't spare. |
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Sep 22 2007, 08:42 AM
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#22
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
Kieth Cowing, www.nasawatch.com has a bit of a rant on this whole subject and has invited comments. One particularly good line in his rant:
"Or should there be no rules - except the one where the project that screams the loudest gets the money? That's management by megaphone. " oooh.. well put. |
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Sep 22 2007, 03:09 PM
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#23
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2511 Joined: 13-September 05 Member No.: 497 |
Kieth Cowing, www.nasawatch.com has a bit of a rant on this whole subject... Again, I don't think there is enough publicly-available information on what the actual budget issues were for Cowing or anyone here to have an valid opinion. The press release just doesn't give enough detail and Cowing shows no signs of knowing anything more. Unfortunately, I can't comment further. -------------------- Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.
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Sep 22 2007, 08:47 PM
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#24
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Member Group: Members Posts: 220 Joined: 13-October 05 Member No.: 528 |
I agree that we really don't know much about what went on behind closed doors.
But to suggest that Alan Stern is "just and administrator" who only cares about how many missions he gets to fly seems unfair since the man is first and foremost a planetary scientist himself. Clearly this is a guy who wants to see as much scientific return as possible. I rather doubt he would be so simplistic as to just count the number of launches as a measure of sucess. One story I'd like to share is a conversation I had several years ago. I was at the JPL Open house (probably in 2005, if memory serves). A friend and I were speaking to an engineer who was working on MSL. I asked him what the cost estimates were for the mission. He said that they thought it would only cost the same as MER - aka 800 million. When I expressed surprise at such a low figure, he explained that among other factors there was going to be only one vehicle, hence only one launch vehicle, one set of tests, etc etc. I was rather doubtful at the time. About a year later I read in Aviation Week that the mission was estimated at 1.2 billion. Then the year after that the number is 1.6 billion. Now we have 1.7 billion. At least one article I have read this week stated that this was the third cost overrun that had made it's way up to headquarters on this project. That certainly matches what I had been suspecting all along. Given how tough some of this mission must be (particularly the Skycrane) I'm not surprised by one or two cost overruns. But I have a lot of sympathy for Mr. Stern's position when the third cost overrun showed up on his desk. |
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Sep 22 2007, 10:35 PM
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#25
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2511 Joined: 13-September 05 Member No.: 497 |
He said that they thought it would only cost the same as MER - aka 800 million...About a year later I read in Aviation Week that the mission was estimated at 1.2 billion. Then the year after that the number is 1.6 billion. Now we have 1.7 billion. Unfortunately media reports are rarely if ever consistent about costs. Is that costs up to launch, or total cost of mission? Is that with or without the launch, ESA contributions, DOE costs for the RTG, etc? Sometimes they report one thing, sometimes something else. You can't base an opinion about how a mission's costs have evolved unless you have hard numbers, and I don't know of a public source for those for MSL. -------------------- Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.
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Sep 23 2007, 07:26 PM
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#26
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Dublin Correspondent Group: Admin Posts: 1799 Joined: 28-March 05 From: Celbridge, Ireland Member No.: 220 |
Some commentary by Leonard David over at LiveScience.com featuring quotes from what appears to be a fairly annoyed Jim Bell.
It's an interesting dilemma for the administration though - eliminating budget overruns is a good thing but that probably will lead to some good missions being significantly reduced in scope or eliminated. I hate to think that MSL will end up being less capable than the MER's in terms of instrumentation but how else can all of the project teams be shown that the new budget management regime is serious? |
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Sep 23 2007, 10:41 PM
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#27
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2511 Joined: 13-September 05 Member No.: 497 |
...how else can all of the project teams be shown that the new budget management regime is serious? Just hypothetically, if you're going to impose hard cost caps on project elements (and I have nothing against the notion of hard caps), it's a good idea to tell the teams about this in advance, don't you think? Otherwise they might reasonably assume that the usual mechanism of project-carried margins for cost growth applied. -------------------- Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.
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Sep 24 2007, 01:46 AM
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#28
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Member Group: Members Posts: 307 Joined: 16-March 05 Member No.: 198 |
It does seem fishy that Dr. Stern found the money to design and add a sample cache to MSL at the same time there wasn't enough to finish an already approved instrument. Yes, it must be a bit hard to lecture others on the How-Not-Make-Cost-Overruns circuit when one has only just added an added to the cost of an expensive project oneself; and for something that really had more to do with a future project (and saving costs on it) than with the project one has added the cost on to. Given that it generally costs NASA a few million dollars to design and build a space pen or a space toothbrush I wonder how many millions that sample cache set it back? I imagine Stern didn't just pop in to his local Walmart and pick one up from the Discounted Space Items shelf. Hmm. You don't suppose...? ===== Stephen |
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Sep 24 2007, 09:02 AM
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#29
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Member Group: Members Posts: 524 Joined: 24-November 04 From: Heraklion, GR. Member No.: 112 |
......Given that it generally costs NASA a few million dollars to design and build a space pen or a space toothbrush I wonder how many millions that sample cache set it back? I imagine Stern didn't just pop in to his local Walmart and pick one up from the Discounted Space Items shelf. ===== Stephen According to the LiveScience story provided by Helvick upthread, the cache costs just 1m. |
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Sep 24 2007, 03:05 PM
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#30
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
Perhaps the Falcon 9 will be able to step in for that scale of launch - it has a similar performance to that of the Delta II. I really, really believe that statement needs to be in future tense, Doug, not present tense. Not a single Falcon has yet had a successful flight. Not even a Falcon 1, much less a Falcon 9. I understand that some of us grew up being told about how wonderful the Saturn series was going to be, and watched as a $25 billion (in 1960's dollars) pile of chips was shoved to the center of the table, with the still-nonexistent Saturn V being one of the trump cards in our hand. But even then, even after some of the Saturn V technology (such as the S-IVB) was proven on earlier flights on smaller rockets, the capabilities of the Saturn V were *always* described in future tense, right up until it finally flew. Until capabilities are demonstrated, they remain planned or virtual, and as such must be spoken of in the future tense. Please. -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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