MSL schedule delay? Options

[climber]

And seriously - if this debate comes up AGAIN - I'm going to start deleting posts.

[Tman]

Yes, time to move on! And which one would you prefer having in the Gale crater or somewhere else on Mars when it's assumed that we can drive many years around?!

But to be honest, with that current economic mess it's more and more harder to make uncommercial basic research for the near future, I guess. Only if could be find one of those rich guys/gals who still benefited.

[vjkane]

I agree with Doug that simply buying more MERs instead of MSL would not have been a wise choice. MER's landing technology severely limited landing sites and the next key questions are not about water but about carbon. MER's instruments are unsuited to that latter question.

What the MSL budget problems do highlight, however, are the inherent problems of technology development. NASA's key missions do push technology, in part because NASA is an engineering R&D organization and in part because the next level of questions in so many areas require new engineering capabilities. Unfortunately, NASA's Mars program is not budgeted for this kind of effort. (And this really brings into question the affordability of Mars Sample Return, but that is for another forum.)

I expect that MSL will fly at the expense of either the MAVEN scout mission or a 2016 mission. After that, NASA will be faced with a hard choice of continuing to do missions that push the engineering envelope (which probably means doing missions infrequently if the budget remains the same) or doing missions that reuse technology. The astrobiology lander/rover that has been discussed in previous roadmaps or Mars sample return would be examples of the former.

The proposed Mars Science Orbiter, is an example of the latter. A series of rover missions based on the proposed 2016 mission concept would be a mixture of the two. The initial rover would reuse much of the design knowledge of the previous rover missions (e.g., the skycrane landing system) but also would require new engineering to fit as much capability into a smaller, cheaper rover. Subsequent missions, however, would reuse that design heritage.

[Mariner9]

The scary thing about the 'smaller cheaper rover' was that the latest estimates I read (in Av Week or Science, can't remember which) put the cost around 1.4 billion. I never know if any given cost statement is in current year dollars, or estimated out across the relevant budget years, but in any case that 1.4 billion wasn't a heck of a lot cheaper than MSL.

All of this makes me worry that Congress is going to look at future rover projects with skepticism.

I think the Mars Exploration Program is hitting the same problem that the Discovery program ran into. The low hanging Martian fruit has been picked.... worthwhile scientific targets are going to get tougher and more expensive as time moves on.

[imipak]

Whilst it's clear that neither MER or MSL are it, I do think that a standard, reusable rover architecture which could be adapted for many different missions (different science payloads, locations, etc) has considerable intuitive appeal to the interested lay-person. The ratio of development to operational costs of one-shot missions is so high, and the risk of budget and schedule overruns with an entirely new platform appears to be so great, that questions like gallen_53's will come up again and and again. (Unless it goes on the banned topic list of course ) In a parallel universe where such a vehicle had been developed and flown in 2004 or 2006, we'd be much less likely to have empty launch slots in the next decade.

I do understand that landing site latitude and elevation make a huge difference to EDL and power engineering, and that those are fundamental drivers of mission architecture; but is it really impractical from an engineering perspective to think about a reusable architecture? (Setting aside issues with specific technology choices.)

Couldn't a flexible and adaptable base system that gave launch, cruise, EDL, and a functional power management, comms and other housekeeping, plus roving, drastically reduce the cost of developing a new science mission? Are there really no instruments left to be flown that could fit onto such a platform which could tell us something new about Mars? If that's the case, then no wonder there are empty launch slots; there's nothing left to do, until a sample return. Is that really the case?

There's a thread elsewhere about MSR issues, so suffice to say there are many significant engineering and planning issues, and that it would very expensive... and that life is going to seem very dull over the next ten-fifteen years for Mars exploration enthusiasts anyway. If MSL is cancelled (or fails), it's looking pretty barren so far as surface operations go anyway. In that scenario, the question of what science targets are "worthwhile" is somewhat moot.

I confess that this is partly an argument from selfish self-interest, in that I (an ill-informed barbarian lurking up in the peanut gallery) would rather see a new set of cool pictures and some incremental science every two years, than a huge but risky technological leap, with the eggs of the entire mission cost riding in one vehicle/basket every six or eight years with nothing in between.

[centsworth_II]

...reusable rover architecture which could be adapted for many different missions...

Many missions? Even with a "cheap" lander there's the launcher and logistical support to consider. The budget for space exploration is still pitiable. There will be no "many missions" even if landers were one half their current cost.

[ElkGroveDan]

We are starting to tread into that circular discussion that Doug has asked us to get away from. This topic is about MSL and its timetable and future prospects.

[dvandorn]

If you have a reliable committment to fly a rover mission every 'n' years, it does make sense to design a standard rover "bus" that can be mass-produced.

Things that can easily be standardized and identical on any rover mission you'll want to fly over the next 20 years would include:

- suspension, wheels, motors, and the standardized data connections for the engineering functions of steering, moving the wheels, etc.

- power generation and distribution.

- descent stage / EDL technology.

- standardized data paths to all engineering controls.

This gives you a rover with (after MSL flies) a proven EDL architecture, a demonstrated ability to deliver and provide power to a given instrument suite, and a design lifetime, range and landing site accessibility around which individual missions can be structured.

Every PI bidding for the next rover mission would simply need to design an instrument suite that connects into the existing power supply and that is capable of operating the standardized engineering controls used to drive and manage the rover. Your computer power and control architecture, which would be part of each individual mission proposal, can be upgraded on every mission to keep up with current technology.

So, for example, if the MSL team had been given the task of creating a decent and well-defined hardware interface between the science/control functions and the main engineering functions, they could have built a dozen of the standardized pieces in about the same amount of time it's taken to build one.

But if you're going to spend the money to build all that hardware, you have to be sure it's going to work the way it's designed, and you have to be sure you'll have the money to fly the follow-on missions. Make no mistake, designing the rovers the way I describe *would* be more expensive than it has been to build a single MSL, we might have spent more than $2 billion by now, with more to come. The only way to justify the extra expense is if you know you'll be able to amortize these costs over a series of missions. Without the firm committment to fly as many missions as the number of rovers you build, it gets really hard to justify the expense.

-the other Doug

[vjkane]

We are starting to tread into that circular discussion that Doug has asked us to get away from. This topic is about MSL and its timetable and future prospects.

ElkGroveDan [or other admin]-
Could you move the last several posts on future roadmaps to a new thread under future missions? In parallel with MSLs problems, there have been several reports on future Mars roadmaps. The last several threads would be relevant to such a thread (and I at least will not re-hash whether or not we should have flown n MERs instead of MSL -- that horse is out of the barn and over the horizon!). But what missions and reuse should follow MSL is a legitimate roadmap discussion.

Thanks.

[centsworth_II]

Without the firm committment to fly as many missions as the number of rovers you build, it gets really hard to justify the expense.

And that's the end of the story right there. MSL is built and the commitment to fly it is not looking real firm. It's the same science package add-ons that would go on a "standard" rover that are killing it.

[vjkane]

If you have a reliable committment to fly a rover mission every 'n' years, it does make sense to design a standard rover "bus" that can be mass-produced.

The Mars orbiter designs have been re-used. If I remember correctly, much of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter design was reused for the Mars ClimateOrbiter (lost) & Mars Odyssey orbiter. The MAVEN mission is reusing substantial portions of the MRO orbiter design. The ESA Mars and Venus Express missions have a high degree of design reuse.

A *future* mid-capability Mars rover design could either be reflown at several opportunities using the same instruments (PIs would compete by selecting locations and landed questions) or, as Doug suggests, PIs could suggest new instruments that fit into the same space, power, data handling, etc. The latter option adds considerable instrument design and total system testing, but less than a completely new rover design.

The alternative currently put forth by the Mars architecture team, however, takes a different approach. It recommends a mid-capacity rover, followed by a Mars Science Orbiter (which could reuse previous orbiter subsystems), followed by a network mission. This mission flow maximizes the range of questions addressed, but at the cost of substantial new design and testing per mission.

[djellison]

What's the point in talking about flying 'n' anything, when at this stage, we are uncertain about flying one? We need MSL to go up, succeed and prove itself before discussing build to print.

[vjkane]

What's the point in talking about flying 'n' anything, when at this stage, we are uncertain about flying one? We need MSL to go up, succeed and prove itself before discussing build to print.

Assuming current budget lines stay about the same, NASA needs to decide in the next couple of years what the follow on mission to Mars will be. The focus now must be on getting MSL to Mars (unfortunately, probably in 2011 ). However, the follow on Mars mission after MSL will probably launch well before the next outer planets flagship mission, and that has been a lively topic of discussion here.

[Burmese]

My initial comments about MSL were intended to focus on that program, and whether NASA was being clear-headed in determining a timetable for a successful mission. My lamentations about the possible empty slot in 2009 were not intended to distract from that topic and I'm sorry if they did.

The worst possible scenario would be to launch in 2009 and have a mission failure that traces back to some subsystem or component that was rushed or not fully tested.

2nd worst would be to cancel the program and at this point I think the media is just playing the "1/2 empty glass" angle to make the news more 'newsworthy'. I would hope and expect that they get MSL to Mars.

Yes, some of the bloom is off and that is partly due to the MER's phenomenal success - there now exists the very real possibility that one or more of the MER's could end up with an operating lifetime on Mars longer than MSL. Back when NASA went to congress for funding things looked nice and orderly - $800m for a couple of rovers designed for at least 90 days and $1.5bn for a nuclear rover to last perhaps 5 years. From here on out, anytime NASA goes to congress with a budget for land assets on Mars that are anything but solar powered they're gonna get grilled on why and the -perception- that any other approach is a boondoggle will be hard to shoot down.

[vjkane]

...some of the bloom is off and that is partly due to the MER's phenomenal success -

However far or long MSL explores, its instrument suite addresses a very different question than MER -- what is the presence and distribution of carbon molecules and could the site have harbored life.