MSL Cost Caps and de-scoping - Sept '07 |
MSL Cost Caps and de-scoping - Sept '07 |
Sep 16 2007, 07:43 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 370 Joined: 12-September 05 From: France Member No.: 495 |
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... |
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Nov 13 2007, 03:53 AM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 234 Joined: 8-May 05 Member No.: 381 |
I found an interesting report and perspective from Los Alamos (project lead for ChemCam) titled "ChemCam Status October 2007" ( full report at "libs.lanl.gov/ChemCam_status.html"). Here's an excerpt:
"NASA's reason for cutting off funding was stated as "cost overruns." However, NASA Headquarters may have based their judgement only on the proposal total of $6.9 M rather than ChemCam's Management Plan, signed by JPL, LANL, and CNES. The Management Plan included upscoping the management, QA, and systems engineering. It also included a change of construction materials requested by the MSL project. This was done to help the MSL project's mass budget, and was done at an agreed upon cost increase of several hundred thousand dollars. ChemCam only made this change at the request of the MSL project. The changes incorporated in the Management Plan are not cost overruns." It hardly seems fair to require an instrument team to make an expensive change, then criticize them for going over budget. There's a lot more of interest in the report. I was most impressed by this: "ChemCam is built for up to 14,000 analyses compared to the ~75 analyses for the in-situ instruments." |
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Nov 13 2007, 04:56 AM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2511 Joined: 13-September 05 Member No.: 497 |
It hardly seems fair to require an instrument team to make an expensive change, then criticize them for going over budget. Welcome to my world. -------------------- Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.
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