Deep Space Network, Calculating mission-specific costs Options

[centsworth_II]

...all kinds of technical misinformation, unfounded opinions, etc, to my ear more technically grating, go uncommented upon in this forum. Seems a bit fanboyish to me.

So comment.

I would agree that the defense of DSN may border on fawning, EXCEPT that the bit I quoted in my last post seems to be an outright accusation of price gouging. Why someone should want to bite the hand that feeds us so much great data from afar, I don't know. Maybe he knows something?

p.s. I thought we were all fans here.

[djellison]

I'm a little bemused about why this is so offensive

It's getting to be time to attack the real funding-drain of any and all deep space missions -- the astronomical (pun intended) fees being charged for communicating with the spacecraft.

This statement is what has offended people. The statement that DSN time was 'astronomical' and should be 'attacked'. I would like to see some numbers to establish if indeed the charges are 'astronomical' before making such a bold statement. Wouldn't you? It's quite a bold claim.

If wanting some numbers and evidence before claiming something needs to be attacked for being astronomical means I'm a fanboy - then I am a fanboy.

Let's try and make an estimation. Looking at the MER Analyst notebook - you can see MER schedules. Sol 1798B, for example.

CODE

2009-02-13T11:09:16 - Sol_1798_AM_HGA
2009-02-13T11:38:17 - Sol_1798_new_master_blip
2009-02-13T11:50:16 - r1218_DRIVE_DRIVE_FOR_TIME_sol_1798_Drive

The HGA starts at 11:09 - and including beep, it must be finished by 11:50. The same pattern is on all sols I can found where uplink was done. Let's round up to an hour.

1hr DSN pass + 45min setup and 15min setdown (that's a req in the docs) is 2 hrs of DSN time. Twice a day. 4 hrs per day.

AF = $1057 * ( 1 * (0.9 + 14/10) ) =, I think, $2431 / hr.

So - I get about $3.55M / year.

I'm not even accounting for the fact that the DSN can now operate multiple spacecraft from one dish at the same time - thus the costs can be shared across multiple missions in some way. Furthermore, for some significant swathes of MER ops - they don't uplink daily - especially during very low power periods. But let's ignore that - and stick with the $3.55M / year.

If the figure I've heard of around $20M/year for MER ops is true - then about 17% of MER costs would be required for 1 x 1hr uplink, per rover, per day.

The costing of downlink is going to be far more complex as it's tied in to Odyssey DSN fees. When Dan and I were at the DSN - it was the 70m dish that was Mars pointed (which costs 4x as much ). BUT - a 15 min UHF pass might generate 30-60 mins of MODY downlink budget. So perhaps it's fair to basically double that $3.55M / year figure for the MER share of downlink as a ballpark estimation. That basically comes out to DSN being 1/3rd of the alleged MER budget at, what I would classify, a worst case rough estimation.

Now - is that astronomical - does it need attacking? I don't think so.

Hands up if you do.

[climber]

Talking about being a fan.
To me the 3 letters of DSN are as magic as the one from JPL.

[dvandorn]

When I said "attack" I meant to aggressively investigate why the costs are so high, as in "we need to attack this problem and get it solved, people." (That is a perfectly acceptable use of the word, and not intended to imply violence or disrespect against the institution being discussed.) Is it intrinsically extremely expensive to operate these radio receivers? I grant you, they have to separate out extremely faint signals from background noise that fairly swamps them. But does the equipment needed to do so cost exorbitant amounts? Or does it require millions and millions of dollars a year in maintenance? These are the questions that were on my mind.

One thing that was on my mind, as well, is that the way supply-and-demand economics works, you can charge pretty much what you want to charge if you have no competition, and for the most part the DSN has no real competition. I guess I'm just wondering, in this age when electronics are so incredibly advanced over what they were when the DSN was designed and built, are there cheaper ways to accomplish what the DSN accomplishes? Even granted the initial outlays that would be required, the fact that the DSN is so time-limited by so many demands on its time, it would be quite useful to have a second or even third set of receivers active at (roughly) every DSN location around the globe (or, as has been suggested, though I think the cost would be really outrageous, place a new DSN into LEO). If a new network can be built that can be operated much more cheaply, with the same quality of data return, as the current DSN, has anyone contemplated how to get this done? *Can* it be done?

Those were the questions that were on my mind.

I certainly didn't mean to offend anyone. I just have run across several cases where DSN costs have been discussed as being very high, tens of millions of US dollars a year to support a single planetary probe. Everyone talks about ways to lower costs so we can fly more missions, but they seem to concentrate on launch vehicles and ASRGs and such, when over the course of a long, multiply-extended mission, it would appear that DSN costs are one of the really high-ticket items in the budget. And the DSN is getting to the point where we can't fly many more missions at one time than we have going right now; we seem to always be looking at trade-offs from one mission to the next based on which mission gets the DSN time at any given day and hour. (I know we've lost some Cassini data due to DSN conflicts, that's been mentioned here before.)

IIRC, one of the main DSN dishes is offline now (repairs that will take a couple of years to complete), and it is making the juggling of requests that much more difficult. We're now in a position, it appears, that if we lost another dish in the DSN, we may have seriously degraded our ability to operate the missions currently in flight. I'd say that calls for an expansion of the capability. And if the many millions (perhaps billions) of dollars US spent in total for DSN time every year underfunds the network, then how in the world are we going to expand it?

These were my concerns. I sincerely apologize if I offended anyone, I certainly didn't mean to. I just wanted to point out some concerns over planning expanded planetary exploration when the DSN seems to be a bottleneck, both in terms of cost and in terms of capability.

Forgiven?

-the other Doug

[mcaplinger]

Forgiven?

To my way of thinking, you don't need forgiveness (frankly this forum would benefit from a little less uncritical adulation) but your idea that DSN costs are such a large fraction of total mission budgets is, so far as I can tell, wrong.

That said, DSN would benefit from some more modern infrastructure, and there could be some cost reductions after that initial investment (why do you think GSFC built their own system?) but I suspect the savings might be 2x, not 10x.

[dvandorn]

You typed your breakdown while I was typing my response, there, Doug. Those are much lower figures than I've seen on some other fora for DSN costs, and also your mentioning of ability to communicate with multiple spacecraft at one time through one dish is something that wasn't in the literature last time I looked through it (about 6 months ago).

And please, stop harping on the term "attack." It means, in this context, to aggressively seek resolution to what appears to be a valid concern. As I've explained, that's certainly how I meant it; I'd appreciate it if you can accept that.

-the other Doug

[Stu]

(frankly this forum would benefit from a little less uncritical adulation)

No disrespect, but I think you're wrong. This forum is an online oasis of respect and good-natured support. I'd much rather have it this way than have to wade thru page after page of angry woo-woo posts attacking NASA for hording images, hiding discoveries and telling lies. In these times of Commissions, shrinking budgets and shrinking visions, I would have thought that adulation - uncritical or not - would be welcomed by anyone involved with NASA.

[djellison]

It wasn't an especially considered or ambiguous statement you made toDoug, so forgive me for taking it at face value - ignoring the attack word - you still described the DSN as "the real funding-drain of any and all deep space missions".

My very rough estimation demonstrates, I hope, that this isn't true.

As for multi-spacecraft on one dish, it's called Multiple Spacecraft Per Aperture - it's all over google in various places. We mentioned it here in '06.

[dvandorn]

To my way of thinking, you don't need forgiveness (frankly this forum would benefit from a little less uncritical adulation) but your idea that DSN costs are such a large fraction of total mission budgets is, so far as I can tell, wrong.

Thanks, Mike. I was going off of some discussions on a couple of other forums I read and sometimes post to, which were quoting DSN costs as as much as $15 to $20 million per year (if not more) for pretty much every spacecraft that uses it, and from what I was seeing from the publicly-available cost formulae at the time, these guesstimates didn't seem out of line.

If I'm wrong, I'm certainly more than willing to admit it. In the beginning here, I was just responding to concerns expressed and opinions given over the cost of yearly extended ops for the MERs, and was trying to determine where all of about $20 million a year was being spent to keep the old girls going. Not that I feel it's money poorly spent, just that, with the world economy in deep recession, I'm afraid that our wonderful planetary exploration vehicles, including the MERs, could be cut back or cut off entirely unless we figure out some way to operate them more cheaply.

For example, I recall that there was a "groundswell" campaign to collect money to keep the Viking landers going when Congress threatened to cut off their funding, and that the money collected wasn't really enough to pay for the DSN time, much less data analysis and storage. And that was nearly 30 years ago. That certainly reinforced the idea that DSN costs were a majority of the continuing operating expenses.

If Doug's numbers are right, then it would seem that we're paying something like $16 million a year for the rather limited staffing and facilities required to operate the MERs. Apologies, but that doesn't sound realistic, either.

-the other Doug

[centsworth_II]

To me the 3 letters of DSN are as magic as the one from JPL.

EDL! EDL! EDL!

[djellison]

If Doug's numbers are right, then it would seem that we're paying something like $16 million a year for the rather limited staffing and facilities required to operate the MERs. Apologies, but that doesn't sound realistic, either.

Take a trip to JPL. If you're lucky Scott or Paolo or someone can show you around. I've seen it, and Cornell as well. It's a lot of people, a lot LESS than it was, but still a lot of people, a lot of offices, a lot of stuff going on. Remember the rows of desks during the early MER ops, Steve and Justin with the images on two monitors - that whole room is still used, day in day out. There's multiple sequencing rooms, theres instrument teams, there's the ISIL. Multiple daily teleconfs between JPL, Cornell, and host institutions of other participating scientists and engineers. The not insignificant effort in PDS releases. Training, IT support, security, oh the damn security, PAO, the servers for the jpg's. Hell - they've spent more on sand, grit, dirt, clay etc than a small building firm.

If it were a business, I can very easily imagine an 8 digit annual turnover.

For comparison - Cassini's 2 years extension is $80m per year.

[dvandorn]

It wasn't an especially considered or ambiguous statement you made toDoug, so forgive me for taking it at face value - ignoring the attack word - you still described the DSN as "the real funding-drain of any and all deep space missions".

My very rough estimation demonstrates, I hope, that this isn't true.

As for multi-spacecraft on one dish, it's called Multiple Spacecraft Per Aperture - it's all over google in various places. We mentioned it here in '06.

Again, apologies. I'd still be very interested in seeing what the actual DSN costs are in these budgets, though. As I said to Mike, if about $20 million per year in extension funding isn't mostly DSN costs, I have to wonder how much it costs to keep 20 to 50 people employed, in office space, and with decent computer access these days...

-the other Doug

[dvandorn]

Again, sorry -- writing posts and getting interrupted at work and you're answering my questions before I can post them...

-the other Doug

[Greg Hullender]

What made a "DSN in space" idea attractive, at least to me, was the idea of letting probes use laser instead of radio to send back data. In theory, that gets you far higher bandwidth for less power (on the probe) and also less weight. JPL seems to have had a group working on this, but it looks like they disappeared around 2003 or so.

--Greg

[Greg Hullender]

. . . I have to wonder how much it costs to keep 20 to 50 people employed, in office space, and with decent computer access these days...

At Microsoft, we used to estimate that the cost of a "head" was roughly double the salary. If those fifty people made $100,000/year each, that'd give you $10M. Throw in some high-priced consultants, and the cost could easily be mostly salaries.

--Greg