"Ms. Emily has a blog entry about the day the entire tactical operations team was made up of women. She lists 31 names."

That explains a lot of money. But I still think That is too many for ongoing operations.

"At the same time, you've got people whose job it is to make sure that the spacecraft isn't too hot or too cold, that it's getting enough power, that it's not in a position that's hurting its ability to get power, that all the myriad subsystems are working properly, that the spacecraft memory and computer systems aren't being overloaded, and so on and so forth. "
Isn't that what computers are for?

My computer alerts me when it's temperature is getting too high or when it's memory is too low. I understand system memory is a precious commodity up there. But what about reducing the number of tasks it is supposed to perform before returning the results? If you are examining a rock, power and system resources should be a known requirement by this time. If you are driving from rock “A” to crevice “B” you don’t need the “arm team” on the job.

Besides at this point in the life of the rovers, many of the rovers team members should expect to be working at a reduced pay or even eliminated. I’ll bet there are a lot of grad students that would jump at the chance. You don’t have to spend $100K plus benefits to get some one qualified to monitor motor currents on a two meter drive.

You have to be realistic about the current situation.
The robots are already sitting there. The code to drive two meters has been used dozens of times. The code to take a picture at a certain time in a certain direction has been used hundreds of times. These are all known things and you don’t need a ‘rocket scientist’ to reinvent them!

Remember the study of the monkey with the stock page and darts? Lets double up a few of the job duties or bring in a few monkeys and get these costs in line with reality.