tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270899075443508100.post8187324868404154255..comments2024-01-03T20:28:17.727-08:00Comments on Future Planetary Exploration: More on MSL historyVan Kanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14227978868817989527noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-270899075443508100.post-38292701931248272672008-12-01T09:45:00.000-08:002008-12-01T09:45:00.000-08:00It is very disturbing to hear NASA Headquarters co...It is very disturbing to hear NASA Headquarters continue to insist that nothing is wrong here. There is a LOT going wrong here. <BR/><BR/>Fundamentally I see two problems. First and foremost, the mission budget (by their own numbers) has climbed from 1.4 billion up past 2.0 billion. That is a 30% overrun, and the 500-600 million dollar hit is going to delay or cancel a lot of other non-Mars program missions. <BR/><BR/>The second problem started five years ago, around the time NASA figured out that this wasn't a 650 million dollar mission. NASA made no adjustments to the Mars program schedules, and just went ahead and scheduled MSL into the 2009 slot as if it were any other mission. It's not. It is a Flagship, costing at least twice what any other previous recent Mars mission cost. And this was not the first jump up in Mars mission costs. Pathfinder, MGS, and Odyssey were in the 300 million range. MERs and MRO were in the 700-900 million range. Then MSL jumped up to the 1.5 billion range. There are very justifiable technical and scientific reasons why a lot of this happened, but to just blindly pretend that this wasn't going to cause budget problems was either foolish or disingenuous.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com