Deep Space Network, Calculating mission-specific costs Options

[dvandorn]

Wow! That's a lot, Greg. Of course, MS has never been known to scrimp on salaries.

I guess I've just been figuring that the mean salary of an engineer is on the order of $50K a year. Doug has noted to me personally that it's likely a lot more -- something that surprises me, but then again, I only know about salary ranges for the companies I've worked for and that friends and acquantiances have worked for. (Not to say our intrepid JPLers don't deserve every penny they get, I was just, from my own work experience, vastly underestimating the salary ranges.)

So, please -- if anyone out there thinks I'm undervaluing the men and women at JPL, APL, Cornell, etc., etc., all I can plead is that the software and hardware engineers I know who work in the Minneapolis area seem to think that $50K is a great salary. Please forgive me for assuming that salary ranges where I live, for people who do different things than supporting space probes, are at all representative of salary ranges across the country. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa....

-the other Doug

[stevesliva]

So, please -- if anyone out there thinks I'm undervaluing the men and women at JPL, APL, Cornell, etc., etc., all I can plead is that the software and hardware engineers I know who work in the Minneapolis area seem to think that $50K is a great salary.

This hardware engineer thinks 50K would be a cruddy salary-- and that's just a relative statement; I'm not a spendthrift saying it's unlivable; I save a lot with my salary-- no matter where you are except perhaps right out of college somewhere where you can't get to the ocean in a day's drive.

But you can see actual numbers:
http://www.glassdoor.com/GD/Salaries/compa...6850&locT=C

(A search for engineer salaries in Pasadena, CA at glassdoor.com)

[ElkGroveDan]

I guess I've just been figuring that the mean salary of an engineer is on the order of $50K a year.

Just the cost of living in Southern California would make that salary not very large at all.

[helvick]

Also to back up what Greg said earlier - the salary that is paid to an employee is just part of the overall cost of each individual to an organisation. Having worked for them I know Dell & Intel do the same as Microsoft - the basic rule of thumb is to double the salary when estimating the cost of warm bodies. When you employ someone you have account for all of the extras - there's obvious things like additional taxes\social insurance levies, medical, pension etc but you also have to pay for the organisational growth needed to support an extra person (their management obviously enough but also the extra HR, finance, payroll, security, maintenance and cleaning staff etc) and you have to pay for their office costs - the floor space they take up, the power you use to heat and cool it, telephony. Then you get into travel and training budgets, paying for conferences and subscriptions\fees to professional\academic bodies\journals etc.

The Glassdoor numbers Steve linked to look about right to me and I would be very surprised if the cost per head in accounting terms for any of these projects was less than $200k per annum.

[djellison]

Plus the unusual extra that you don't have in the typical corporate situation. The ISIL, maintaining two TB rovers, liasing with other missions for UHF relay etc, science teams (outside that number of people figure)

Just 50 people at $200k a head. Plus $5m DSn. Plus $5m for the 'only in MER land' extras. $20m.

I don't honestly think it could be done cheaper without compromising mission safety or productivity significantly.

One pertinent tweet from Scott last night

I worked "only" 11.5 hours today and now I feel like a slacker. I'm guessing that's not a healthy attitude toward life.

I still think MER at $20M is CHEAP.

[Greg Hullender]

This also helps explain why Alan Stern was so pleased that NH uses a staff of ten or less during cruise, as compared to Voyager which needed 100.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspec...ective_1_5_2009

Perhaps we should ping Alan and ask if he'll share with us what New Horizon's actual costs are per year during cruise. That'd be a rock-bottom minimum, since there's no data analysis to speak of.

--Greg

[nprev]

If the total annual O&M budget of MER is only $20M to cover all the activities described plus personnel costs, that's RIDICULOUSLY cheap. I know of programs whose sustainment activities are confined to software maintenance alone for one (1) platform using two or three bodies part-time, and they spend $3-5M per annum just to do that.

One thing you can't put a price tag on is the dedication of people like Scott & Paolo & all the other MER team members. (Or maybe you can; MER would probably require 2x-3x more funding & people if the program's staff weren't truly passionate about it!)

[Greg Hullender]

MER would probably require 2x-3x more funding & people if the program's staff weren't truly passionate about it!

Although in that case, the mission would have been over after the first 90 days!

--Greg :-)