> All told, the total cost of the Mars Sample Return mission is now about $10 billion.
Woof.
For a bit of perspective, the cost of building, launching, landing, and operating (for 5 years!) the Spirit and Opportunity rovers was $944 Million, according to the wiki. [0]
It sucks that billionaires like Musk spend their money on vanity stuff like twitter or yachts when instead with their wealth they could be personally funding… a mars… um…
The US has the best space companies in the world, yet they tasked JPL, an inexperienced public organization, with creating the largest and most complex Mars lander to date. No wonder the costs keep exploding. I think Zurbuchen is right, they should either contract private companies to create the lander, or cancel the Mars Sample Return mission entirely.
Woof.
For a bit of perspective, the cost of building, launching, landing, and operating (for 5 years!) the Spirit and Opportunity rovers was $944 Million, according to the wiki. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover