MSL Cost Caps and de-scoping - Sept '07 Options

[Rakhir]

Very bad news.
It's certainly the best way to run the business of cost overruns but even if we are used to these kind of consequences, it's always sad to hear.

NASA cuts LANL sampler from next Mars rover
http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2007/09/...news/news02.txt

Edit :
And also...
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/sto...p;channel=space
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.rss.sp....html?pid=25415

... removal of the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) and the zoom capability on the mast camera...
... SAM and CheMin were cost-capped...

[Mariner9]

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.

[mcaplinger]

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.