[extropy-chat] Huygens: First visitor to Titan

Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
Fri Jan 14 20:45:54 UTC 2005


Looks like the mission went quite well, with only the minor hiccup of
one of the comm channels being bad. I hope the ESA gets their money's
worth of science data.

Speaking of money, I was browsing around looking for costs of the
Cassini-Hugens mission and found this cost info:

Cost of mission: Total: $3.26 billion. US Cost (Cassini): $2.6 billion,
ESA: $500 million, Italian Space Agency: $160 million

Cassini is a 4 year mission orbiting Saturn (2.1 million minutes) for
an orbiter cost of $1236.68 per minute (not counting interest on funds
invested 10 or more years ago). That is pretty pricey science, but on a
par with, for instance, per minute equivalent of the $200,000 price
being charged by Virgin Galactic for a suborbital tourist trip. Not too
bad, a lot better and more exotic science than can be had during a
gee-whiz ride to the edge of space.

The Huygens probe is not quite so cost effective. At $660 million for
the combined european effort (I don't know if this accounts for the
cost of the hitchhike ride from Earth to Saturn aboard Cassini), for
about 4 hours and 26 minutes of science gathering, this results in a
cost of $2.48 million per minute of science. Lets hope the science
gotten from this is worth it.

It should be noted that the Cassini-Huygens mission was the last of the
big budget space probe missions.

Comparing to other government space probe missions:

Mars Rovers (Spirit & Opportunity): 
Cost:                   $800 million
Science time (to date):   1 million+
Cost per minute of science:  $777*
* this might be slightly higher due to the troubleshooting of Spirit's
flash memory problems.

The Mars Rovers have to date set the standard for science value, having
conclusively proven the prior existence of significant quantities of
water involved in Mars geological history. They are currently on a
reduced schedule due to winter sunlight, but are continuing to operate,
many months after their designed 90-day mission schedules, and will
continue to drive that per minute cost down significantly.

Can anyone involved in private science research provide some
information as to what cost per minute of science a private research
organization would find acceptable?

=====
Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism


		
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