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Space & Planetary Science

What is Good for Pasadena Is Good For The Planetary Society

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 4, 2016
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What is Good for Pasadena Is Good For The Planetary Society

What NASA’s $1.3 billion budget increase means for JPL, Los Angeles Daily News
“The higher than usual appropriations are “almost unprecedented,” according to Jason Callahan, a space policy advisor for the Planetary Society, an advocacy group based in Pasadena. It’s members sent over 120,000 requests for an increase to Congress and the White House this year. “JPL comes off very well in this budget,” Callahan said.” NASA received $1.631 billion for Planetary Science, nearly $200 million more than 2015, after years of cuts. The $250 million for the Mars 2020 Rover should give the space agency more room if problems arise down the road, Callahan said. “It really takes the pressure off of that mission,” he said.”
Keith’s note: In other words, JPL is worried that they will have to slip Mars 2020 Rover due to technical issues/cost overruns for the same reason that its half-brother MSL experienced similar problems. After half a century of building Mars probes JPL still can’t do anything more efficiently or cheaper. And of course the Pasadena-based JPL cheerleaders at the Planetary Society won’t discuss this issue.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

15 responses to “What is Good for Pasadena Is Good For The Planetary Society”

  1. Gonzo_Skeptic says:
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    “After half a century of building Mars probes JPL still can’t do anything more efficiently or cheaper.”

    And why should they?? There is no reward for doing so.

    If you want to go to Mars, you’ve got to go through JPL. Period.

    If you miss your launch window, no problem. Ask Congress to slaughter a few innocents to pay for the screw ups.

    This has become a bi-annual circus event with the same clowns running the show.

    • fcrary says:
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      “If you want to go to Mars, you’ve got to go through JPL. Period.”

      MAVEN is a University of Colorado/University of California, Berkeley/Goddard Spaceflight Center mission. JPL has some involvement, for, if memory serves, navigation and telecom. JPL doesn’t have a _complete_ monopoly on NASA Mars missions.

  2. MarcNBarrett says:
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    God forbid the idea of something building another rover that is a minor revision of a tried-and-true design that has already worked on Mars. Another Spirit or Opportunity, for example, both of which lasted many dozens of times longer than their originally intended lifetimes. Have to keep making new rovers that are totally new designs, so something new can always go wrong.

  3. AstroInMI says:
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    There won’t be any issues or overruns with Mars 2020 since it is just a rebuild of Curiosity. That’s how it was sold, after all. It’s low risk. Just like InSight was sold as low risk because it was based on Mars Phoenix.

    Oh, wait.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Except for the instrumentation.

      • AstroInMI says:
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        Except Phoenix’s budget (incl LV) was $386 million. InSight (incl LV) was $675 million. I’m not costing for inflation, but there’s obviously no way swapping out instruments cost that much more money. My concern is the same thing is going to happen with Mars 2020. Suddenly a reuse mission ends up costing more than the original mission.

        2020 is supposed to be $1.5 billion. Curiosity was $2.5 billion. (Again not adjusted for inflation) I simply don’t believe that 2020 will come in at $1.5 billion. I would be happy to eat these bits in 2020, though.

      • fcrary says:
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        Except for quite a bit. Different instruments can (potentially) change everything. Does the new set of instruments have the same power requirements? Not just watts, but requirements on filtered versus noisy input voltage, duty cycle (average versus maximum power draw) etc. If you change that, now you’re changing the power system. Do the instruments have the same data rates? If not, then you’ve just changed the telecom and data storage systems. Commanding? Now you’re talking about more changes to command and data handling, as well as operations.

        I’d say that, if the 2020 rover really was a rebuild of MSL/Curiosity, why does the project have a phase A or B? Everything up through the end of phase B and the PDR (Preliminary Design Review) is about putting together a viable, preliminary design. If you’re copying a previous vehicle, don’t you already have that preliminary design?

  4. Joseph Smith says:
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    I worked directly on several planetary projects at JPL, and again on human spaceflight projects for JSC. There is no comparison, especially in the area of systems engineering.

    While JPL may be well behind most of industry in the systems engineering area, its probably the best SE in NASA. If there is a job to do that has never been done before, then its JPL’s job to do the work. Otherwise give it to a prime contractor. Both Phoenix and InSight used a spacecraft prime contractor. (And the current InSight problem is with the French.)

    While at JSC, they have people who call themselves systems engineers but who really just justify the technical decisions made for political reasons. Its expensive because they literally do everything three or four times before they get it right, because the political decisions never come out right at first.

    • Gonzo_Skeptic says:
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      “the best SE in NASA”

      Technically, JPL is not directly part of NASA. Most of the employees work for CalTech.

      • fcrary says:
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        Technically, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore aren’t run by the Department of Energy. They are managed under contract by a University of California-led consortium of some sort. I believe the arrangement is true for CalTech and JPL. It doesn’t change the fact that LANL and LLNL are considered DOE labs, and JPL is considered a NASA lab.

        • Joseph Smith says:
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          My understanding is that Fcrary is correct. And NASA knows, understands, and occasionally uses the difference to its advantage. For example, the Space Station Freedom Level II office space in Reston, VA was leased by JPL because they don’t have to use all of the federal procurement rules, and could get the lease much faster. NASA HQ was happy, even though they had to pay Caltech its management fee (like UC for the DoE labs) on top of the cost of the lease.

  5. Zed_WEASEL says:
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    JPL will only change after a vehicle with a letter T badge shows up on Mars. Maybe in 4 or 6 years time.

  6. TheBrett says:
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    I could have sworn once someone mentioned in the comments here a meeting where they asked JPL scientists/engineers why they didn’t use standardized spacecraft design (or something like that) that would save a lot of money in development and construction. JPL’s answer was something like “But we want to design a unique spacecraft for each mission!”

    I’ll give them their due, though – their robots are incredibly durable. Tons of them have survived well past their initial planned mission times. Opportunity alone is ridiculously durable, to the point where it’s generating XKCD jokes.

    • fcrary says:
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      I’m sure there are people at JPL who just enjoy the challenge of designing new, unique spacecraft every time. But there are also people who feel it it the right thing to do. If you are focused on your mission, rather than the overall exploration program, then it’s natural to want that mission to be optimized for the best results. If flight opportunities are rare, and it looks like that mission will be the only one of its sort for a long time, then it’s also natural to want it to be optimized for the best possible results. Well, optimizing means a custom spacecraft, so that produces a desire to make each one unique. Personally, I disagree. Standardized spacecraft cost much less, so they allow more missions. That’s good for the overall program and makes flight opportunities more frequent.

  7. montagna_lunga says:
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    If half of the money that goes to JPL were directed to other post-secondary institutions, Caltech might get the message. Meanwhile we’d get twice as much hardware, science and future aerospace engineers for our money.