[extropy-chat] Huygens: First visitor to Titan

[Eugen Leitl]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 12:45:54PM -0800, Mike Lorrey wrote:

> 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

Negligible, if compared to what people spend on military programs, or
spectator sports.
 
> 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.

There's no science to be done in suborbital flights. It's all been done in
1960s with Laika et al.

SpaceShipOne isn't even a suborbital flight. 
 
> 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

If you fly farther, your equipment has been designed at an earlier time.
Your energy budget is lower, and so is the package size. Methane ice and low
light conditions do not sound like easy environment for rovers, nor bright
technicolor pictures. Also, the data rate is lower, becase your send power is
limited, and the distance is vastly larger (and we still don't have an
Interplanet in place).

Still, it'd be nice if the instrument package was driven by radiosotope
battery. It didn't drown, that was really unexpected. We might not get as
lucky the next time (assuming, there's going to be a next time, which isn't
quite obvious right now).

> 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.

Completely different design space.
 
> 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?

There's no such thing as a private space organization doing research (with
the possible exception of the forthcoming solar sail probe, which is not exactly
trailblazing science).

This might change at some point, but right now this is just how things are.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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