GAO: The DSN is actually falling apart Options

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-06-445

[djellison]

Truth be told, I could go even further and say that the generosity with which DSN facilities have been made available to ESA could justify in some way a contribution from those nations...of course it's very give and take with things like this - you scratch our back..we'll scratch yours etc.

One thing that I've thought of...there was a detailed breakdown of estimated DSN costs for missions in the recent as a function of number of contacts per week, length of contacts, and facility size required etc in available in the library of the current Discovery AO
http://discovery.larc.nasa.gov/PDF_FILES/N...S-Update061.pdf

I'm not sure how the funding for a facility like this works - but I presume it's income is both from funding on a mission by mission basis as outlined in that doc, and also general DSN funding from NASA that's for maintainance and upgrades as opposed to normal running costs.

Perhaps one or the other needs a bit of a hike.

Doug