Hi,

Not so long ago I read that Cassini mission was extended for 2 more years. Estimated costs 160 mil US dollar! What can be so expensive to keep the mission running?? It must be just salaries for a dozen of scientists + communication channel with the probe?

My goodness, that does seems like a lot. I guess time on the Deep Space Network is going up like everything else and it must be analysed and interpreted, but still... And all from the U.S. - nothing more from the ESA or the Italian Space Agency. I keep hearing how the European economy is doing better than we are. I searched and none of the news articles cited any sources and the NASA press release has no money figures on it.

I discovered that Cassini's high gain antenna was built by the I.S.A. for the same cost.

Sigh. Could we add another $10 million for some auditors?

I don't understand either.

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I admit it. I AM obsessed with the RHIC. Hey, what u gonna do while you are waiting for the LHC?

Yes, every nickel of that budget is spent on the ground. Mission operations, DSN operations, data analysis. I called my "boss" at JPL when they made the announcement and congratulated her on a two year extension of her job in Public Relations there in the Cassini Project Office

Matthew Ota
Saturn Observation Campaign volunteer

Cassini is more than just a "couple dozen" scientists. I seem to recall there were roughly a thousand people working on the mission in 2004, when Cassini/Huygens got to Saturn. I suspect that number is actually larger now, as more and more people are working on the data. Not all of them are full time, and some of the original engineers would have moved on (don't need to build or maintain equipment), but there are a lot of people, computers, storage and transmission equipment to fund.

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"What do you care what other people think?" -- Richard Feynman
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Feynman, at the conclusion of his Challenger report

Expensive? $160 million is chump change compared to expenditures on things best not mentioned under the "no politics" rule.

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

I support the extension of Cassini as well as the continued mission for the Mars Rovers. But costs need to be justified - especially in hard economic times. And please, no one compare to this to Pentagon no-bid contract (enough said).

And after thinking, of course Cassini and the Mars Rovers not missions that you can just listen. They require active work, nagivating (the Saturn system may be the most complex network of bodies in the system!) and decide What to Look at Next. But maybe after the data is collected, we can get help from volunteer or the ESA and Italian space agency who might be just as invested in this as we are.

Of course, in all cases, whenever we spend BILLIONS to send probes out the far and weird, it would be a crime not to spend millions to exploit them as much as possible, until contact is lost or they become only good for a final hard landing scenario.

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I admit it. I AM obsessed with the RHIC. Hey, what u gonna do while you are waiting for the LHC?

I think it is absolutelly ok to invest into research and exploration. At least it is better than all farming or social subsidies (like it is done here in Europe). My intention was not to criticize NASA, but to find out what exactly costs that much money to maintain the mission. Even if they have 100 scientists which get 150 000 $ a year and another 100 supporting staff for 50 000$ it would make just 20 mil a year! And I thought the scientific data itself(photos, etc) is analyzed at the universities months/years later and is not funded from nasa budget.

No, some of the funding for the data analysis comes from the total mission budget. Each instrument has a budget to partially fund researchers who work on the data.

Also, don't forget overhead: if a researcher has a $100,000 salary, the grant needs to have ~$200,000 total. Some of that goes to health insurance, some goes to the general university budget and some goes to general equipment funds and such.

As I said, there were ~1000 people working on Cassini/Huygens when it got to Saturn. Around 2/3rds of those were in the US, I believe.

__________________
"What do you care what other people think?" -- Richard Feynman
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Feynman, at the conclusion of his Challenger report