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Space Forum / Space Flight / August 2003Cost of science on probes?
Just wondering - in terms of a percentage - how much money is actually spent on the science instruments on a space probe? I know the launcher accounts for alot. If it depends - lets use the mars probes as a example. Just curious. >Just wondering - in terms of a percentage - how much money is actually spent >on the science instruments on a space probe? I know the launcher accounts >for alot. The launcher is usually a fairly modest slice of the pie, say a third or less except in unusual cases. As for the spacecraft itself, the instrument bill varies a whole lot, from quite low to well over half. It depends greatly on what the spacecraft has to do, and on how much restraint its organizers exercise. It's almost always possible to improve the science results by spending more on the instruments, so it comes down to how much money is available, and how big a risk of overruns you want to incur.  SignatureMOST launched 1015 EDT 30 June, separated 1046, | Henry Spencer first ground-station pass 1651, all nominal! | henry@spsystems.net > >Just wondering - in terms of a percentage - how much money is actually spent > >on the science instruments on a space probe? I know the launcher accounts [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > instruments, so it comes down to how much money is available, and how big > a risk of overruns you want to incur. It also depends a lot on how difficult, i.e. expensive, it is just to "get there" and be a functional spacecraft with no instruments. For, say, a Mars rover or a Saturn orbiter it takes a large mound of expensive and sophisticated googaws (and a shed full of engineers to lash it all together so it works) just to collect zero science, so there's obviously going to be less room in the mass and cash budgets for instrumentation. Whereas something like an Earth orbiter is a lot easier and cheaper, so you have more money and mass to spend on science collection. |
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