Thread extracted from "Mars rover news" thread and retitled - ToSeek

Don't get me wrong, I love Mars exploration.
But why does it take $20+ million to run the rovers?

antenna time is probably biggest. Plus salaries, office space, electricity....


it does seem excessive

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You need several dozen engineerrs, scientists, two floors of office buildings at JPL, servers, technicians, testing facilities to maintain, and then there's the DSN time etc.

Given that, in terms of actual cost, a person typically costs twice their salary (once you've given them a desk, air-con, training, a pc, etc etc). Then consider that senior engineers are a $100k salary - that's $200k. $20M isn't a lot of good engineers and scientists. They're already saving a lot of money compared to the operating costs of the initial 90 days and the first few months after it. They're down to pretty much the floor of what it costs to operate them.

Given that they cost $800M to build and launch with a promise of 90 days ( $4.4m per rover per day ) - $20m year ( < $28k/rover/day ) is remarkably good value. And don't forget Mars Odyssey here - THEMIS and GRS have done some awesome science (they told us where to send Phoenix) - and could continue to do so if they found the money for it.


Doug

Salaries? How much do these people make anyway? I am assuming there are only a few people in each team.

I mean I have two sons that are pretty good at radio controlled cars and my daughter can press the button on the camera!

Antenna time? So is one governmet agency charging another agency for use of public owned equipment?

Lets get real. This is one of the things that burn the publics butt.

you are severely misguided in your thoughts.


and without insulting your children, who due to their father's poor management will need all the good luck and schools they can get, we'll see if they ever get to the point of controlling rovers on Mars.

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Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

there is lots to hope for, well - unless Samkent is your father.

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"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
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Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

Just to echo what crosscountry said, this is a little more than driving an RC car. For one thing, it is not done in real time, because of the time delay. A series of commands is uploaded to the rover.

But more importantly, it is deciding what is the target of investigation, what tools to use, what data to collect, and then analyzing the data. How much do you think a Ph.D. in Planetary Science or Geology is worth?

As far as antenna time - someone has to pay to upkeep the DSN, whether it comes from one budget or another. Again, this stuff ain't free.

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

I think you grossly underestimate the amount of work required. In any given day, you need to:

- Decide which science investigations are most worthwhile
- Decide which science investigations are most practical
- Decide which science investigations you're actually going to do (given the above)
- Figure out how you're going to do them
- Figure out exactly what instructions need to be sent to the spacecraft
- Make absolutely sure you're sending the right instructions
- Figure out when the instructions can be sent to the spacecraft
- Schedule time to send the instructions
- Send the instructions to the spacecraft
- Make sure the instructions were received by the spacecraft correctly
- Figure out how the spacecraft should store the data collected
- Figure out when the data is going to be signalled back to Earth
- Schedule time to receive the data
- Receive the data
- Make sure the data was received correctly
- Process the data to put it into a human-analyzable form
- Distribute the data to all interested parties

And that's just to support science 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.

On top of that, you've got all the overhead: all of these people have secretaries and managers, they have offices and bathrooms, they have computers and electronic equipment that need to be maintained and upgraded, there are infrastructure systems like the Deep Space Network whose money these days comes almost entirely from the specific missions that use them.

They might possibly be able to run the rovers on less money, but the last time they tried to cut back in a big way, they lost a $150 million spacecraft because no one noticed either that data given in pounds was being interpreted as newtons or that - as a result - the spacecraft's trajectory was 100 kilometers closer to Mars than it should have been.

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Once upon a time maintaining and supporting NASA's infrastructure components, of which the DSN is one, was part of the overall budget. But about 15 years ago, the accounting system was modified so that all the money went to specific projects, and the projects had to pay for any part of the infrastructure they wanted to use.

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Hmmm... It's interesting to note how people can read one thing so differently.

I hardly think that was a serious suggestion, It seems to me more like a joking way of saying that there may be possible to bring in some outside help, you know, sponsors, sell some exploration time to some rich people with to much money on their hands and so on...

Though messages like "The next 30 sols will be brought to you by The international society for the prevention of overweighted pocketbooks" poping up on every page might become quite tedious, and not really something one would want from an organisation like NASA, may be the source of some conficts of interests and simmilar things...

Anyway, there is no basis in that post for judgeing Samkent's skill at parenting, and it is hardly a subject for this forum anyway.

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sometimes, i think the rover teams "leak" this stuff to create a bit of a "buzz" to get the minority of people that actually follow these things to fire off enough emails to NASA and their representatives in government stating what a stupid move it would be to kill the rovers to make them seem like a bigger group than they really are.. and it also gets them mentioned on the 24 hour news networks at 3am when almost no one is watching, which is free publicity.

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"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.

And how do you know that this has not been done? And how do you know what a realistic cost is? Please tell us how much it costs to support a graduate student for a year. Please show us some examples of project costing you have done, for example in Earth-based R&D?

I've known plenty of Earth based R&D projects that cost a lot more than $4 million a year.

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We are not talking 4 million, the budget is 22 million.
You also forget the R&D phase is over. We are in the operational phase. 4 years plus.
As to the grad students, nothing polishes a resume like a stint in a NASA control room.
Give them $15/hr, 40 hrs a week and let the rovers have weekends off. That way both planets can start off Mondays with recharged batteries.

Have you ever been a grad student?


I find your attitude tiring.

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"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

The R&D phase is most certainly not over; at least not how I mean it. We're not researching how to operate the rovers, we are researching Mars. That's the whole point of this.

As an industrial scientist, I have worked on and managed several programs where the company I worked for sponsored University research. Its been a while, but $30,000/year (which is what your $15/hour works out to), is pretty close to the going rate for what a company has to pay for a single graduate student's work. But even still, there is often many additional expenses, including covering the overhead of the University, which can add 40 to 50% to that cost.

But the list of tasks that ToSeek has several posts back is no where close to the work of one or two graduate students. And you continue to ignore a proportional share of such things as the DSN.

But let's stick with your idea - how many graduate students do you think you'll need, what other support will they require (equipment, facilities, supervision, administration, etc.) and what will be your total budget?

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I'm sure many of them are part-time, particularly the ones on the science team who are based elsewhere than JPL.

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Yes, but do you want to be the project manager who explains to Congress that a $400 million Mars rover was lost because it was entrusted to a 22-year-old grad student who messed up?

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