NASA’s Mars Sample Return has a new price tag–and it’s colossal

Re:NASA’s Mars Sample Return has a new price tag–and it’s co... by cubefox on Saturday June 24, 2023 @11:02AM (#36459272)

The main difference is that SpaceX operates very efficiently, while most public institutions (like JPL, which currently develops the lander, apparently while being ill-prepared for the task) are highly inefficient.

A striking example is the large amounts of money NASA spends on SLS, which is in most places already an extremely conservative vehicle which reuses as much as possible and keeps any innovations at a minimum. With the JPL lander the situation could be even worse.

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Re:NASA’s Mars Sample Return has a new price tag–and it’s co... by ryandrake on Saturday June 24, 2023 @11:24AM (#36459469)

As we just saw in the news this past week, the jury is still out about the wisdom of building and operating complex, dangerous missions "very efficiently" and with "innovations".

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Re:NASA’s Mars Sample Return has a new price tag–and it’s co... by wongarsu on Saturday June 24, 2023 @11:40AM (#36459607)

The Falcon 9 is very efficient and innovative, but also one of the most reliable rockets on the market.

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Re:NASA’s Mars Sample Return has a new price tag–and it’s co... by cubefox on Saturday June 24, 2023 @11:51AM (#36459698)

Yeah. By itself Starship is indeed very dangerous for human spaceflight (no launch abort system, very risky landing procedure) compared to other designs except the Space Shuttle. But the reliability can be optimized while doing a lot of unmanned satellite missions.

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Re:NASA’s Mars Sample Return has a new price tag–and it’s co... by Shawnj2 on Saturday June 24, 2023 @09:05PM (#36464241)

We are hundreds of successful starship flights away from it being human rated IMO.

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