MSL Commentary in Science Magazine

MSL is has turned into exactly the kind of money-pit that space program critics like to point at and shriek "boondoggle!!!"

Oh please!
Alan Stern so hopelessly damaged the Mars Program that its not clear it will recover in our lifetimes, yet he and others want to blame MSL rather than short-sited NASA policies that don't budget for likely over-runs. And with commentary like the above, how do you think that makes the people who are trying to get MSL built and ready for the 2009 launch feel? What do you know about dedicated teams who build spacecraft? Are they sitting around smoking big cigars and laughing about all the cash in their pockets? No, they're working very hard, above and beyond the call of duty, typically for less money than the time and effort they're putting in. They do so because they care about this and are passionate about it. This IS rocket science. MSL is trying to do a lot of things that have never been done before. Without MSL's innovative approaches to landing and mobility, we'd not be able to contemplate sending spacecraft to specific, high-science locations on Mars now or in the future. The MER landing ellipses were huge, and because of the landing system and mobility system designs, the science community was stuck with going to 2 rather crappy landing sites, relative to where the really good stuff is (and don't even ask what I think about Phoenix). MSL goes the next step and will allow us to get a rover to some really important geological features. Still, MSL doesn't go far enough, as it cannot reach all latitudes and all elevations. You can't expect to advance Mars science without being able to reach very specific, pinpoint locations on the ground using high-flight heritage hardware. Why does a project like MSL cost so much? You want it to land safely and do the science it was designed to do, right? It is only a "boondoggle" if the science MSL is going to do isn't worth doing. And, if that is the case, then all the other science one would do on the surface of Mars is also not worth doing... because you need a big development effort like MSL to pioneer these new approaches to getting very sophisticated science instruments to a very specific location on the planet. Sample return and all the other neat-o, gee-whizz things people would like to do at or learn about Mars won't happen without this kind of effort.

Alan Stern so hopelessly damaged the Mars Program that its not clear it will recover in our lifetimes...................

Yea demanding cost realism is really damaging to the Mars program. Demanding that JPL and GSFC even come within three sigma of their cost estimates seems to be beyond their ability to accomplish.

Anon: "...yet he and others want to blame MSL rather than short-sited NASA policies that don't budget for likely over-runs."

The main reasons budget over-runs are so likely are that JPL 1) lacks fiscal discipline and 2) has the hubris to think their Mars projects are too important to terminate, hence more money will show up somehow.

JPL is a contractor to NASA and they should be treated as such. For too long they've acted like the prodigal son who can do no wrong.

Anon "Without MSL's innovative approaches to landing and mobility, we'd not be able to contemplate sending spacecraft to specific, high-science locations on Mars now or in the future. The MER landing ellipses were huge, and because of the landing system and mobility system designs, the science community was stuck with going to 2 rather crappy landing sites, relative to where the really good stuff is (and don't even ask what I think about Phoenix)."

I have no doubt that if it all comes off, MSL will be a great mission. However its overrun has caused the cancellation of other missions and its ambitious new landing system could mean that NASA could end up with a "high-science" crater and no functioning Mars missions by around 2012 on..

In relative terms MER and Phoenix have been terrific value for money - even with limitations, and I would have prefered to have seen more such missions concurrent with MSL. There was even talk of a third MER mission, with a incrementally improved intrumentation load.

You call going from $650 million, to 2.1 billion a "cost overrun?" LOL

I'll bet a lot of scientists, that have dedicated many years of their lifes planning missions, will not be too happy about this "cost overrun", when their programs gets cancelled.

MSL wasn't $650 million when NASA decided to go ahead with it. It was well over 1.5 or 1.6 billion at the time. Get your facts straight. Also *what* missions have been cancelled b/c of an MSL cost over-run? Name them. Name real missions that were funded and underway that got cancelled. What were their names? In addition, why is MSL going to cost more than originally thought? Find out. Get your facts straight. Don't assume JPL is a bunch of fat-cats lighting big cigars with $100 bills. If anything, when MSL launches, they'll have to have massive layoffs b/c NASA hasn't given them another planetary project of "flagship magnitude". And show me how Phoenix was a good deal for the money spent (OMG!). If anything, it's sent NASA back to the drawing board, asking "what is the purpose of our Mars program?" because finding water on Mars, for the umpteenth time, became the laughing stock of the late night shows. The Mars program is dying and it's not MSL's fault. And, oh joy, look how interesting and exciting the 2013 Mars Scout mission will be. Do you realize NASA selected a boring orbiter with no cameras on it? Do you realize that NASA would not possibly have selected a Scout mission that would enter the martian atmosphere, because NASA doesn't believe such missions can be done within the Scout cost cap? (i.e., look at Phoenix, which blew its cost cap without even counting the dollars spent on the system before the mission was selected (because it was the 2001 lander hardware).

@Anon. A mission designed to cost $650M that come in at $2.1B is a failure and should be cancelled (It should have been canceled once it overran by 50%). The huge cost overruns are a clear sign that the project management and JPL management are not doing their jobs. You talk about how great MSL is for its new and wonderfully complex entry system... but to my engineering mind, MSL's complex entry system is a huge risk that is triply risky when combined with the incompetent management of MSL. If MSL craters on Mars its going to take much of the congressional support for NASA's robotic missions with it.

If future Mars science requires MSL-level complexity, then maybe its time to focus on other destinations where the science return would be much higher for a $2B investment. I can think of four places where life is would be easier to find than Mars: Enceladus, Europa, Titan, and Ganymede. And I'm tempted to add comets, Centaurs, and KBOs to the list. Returning a sample from Enceladus or a comet would be much easier than from Mars... and much more likely to contain life too.

This is JPL's Sub-Prime Mortgage Meltdown and they are being baled out. The Fall-out is a deficit for JPL programs and Science Missions across NASA. Certainly, a lot of the MSL technology is cutting edge, untried but this is exploration and interplanetary journeys are not yet routine off-the-shelf trips.

MSL like any project must expect cost-overruns - hardware issues, delivery delays, software development setbacks. Mis-management begins with not preparing for the worst, not expecting problems and having recourses. We can count off the NASA adventures gone bad with poor management being the primary cause. MSL management is the "Sub-Prime" that NASA and the Feds bought into.

And project management is JPL's big problem. Leave these managers and their wunderkind or old sages alone to their own device and comeback in 48 months. Oversight is lacking, transference of lessons learned, discipline and adherence to good practices. Lockheed-Martin got it right the second time with Mars Phoenix but I don't think we will see a second try at a $2 Billion Rover. Like Mars Observer, objectives will be divvied up between less expensive Rovers or some Lighter than air vehicles. Nevertheless, lets cross our fingers and hold our breaths for 6 minutes hoping the throwing of good money after bad pays off.

I agree with anom about MSL. The MSL mission is a large leap in technology ( mobility and entry systems). As far as I know JPL is the only place in the world with expertise in developing and fielding planetary rovers. If this is not true, please name an industrial contractor or another government lab with such proven expertise.

JPL has developed many great flagships missions over the years, including Gallileo, Cassini, MER, etc... These missions were all quite expensive but worth the money.

By the way the costs we are talking about in this email thread are quite small compare to the costs of operating the Space Shuttle or developing its replacement. Human Space Flight has the lion share of the NASA budget.

Although I am not a science expert, I believe that the Mars program is achieving great things with quite a modest amount of $, relatively speaking. See the two Mars orbiters, Odyssey and MRO, and the MER rovers and Phoenix. All currently operating on Mars (with the orbiters "helping" the ground assets by acting as telecom relays) and providing every day a more detailed understanding of Mars, and preparing for the arrival of the first humans in ~20-40 years from now.

Perhaps people should read the magazine "Science" more often (available at your local library) and read the many papers published by the PI's funded by the Mars Program.

"No Mo MSL" is living in a fantasy world if this person truly believes that missions to look for life on Galilean satellites or Saturnian satellites would be cheaper than $2 billion.



Folks, do you know anything about spacecraft development? Where do cost over-runs come from? Typically, it comes from the fact that there are few vendors for specific parts you need to build a space-worthy machine. If those few manufacturers run into schedule trouble, you're stuck. It's not like there's lots of companies out there that have sufficient skilled workers to drop the other things they are doing and get to work on the parts for a Mars rover that has a very narrow window to be built and launched--and its not like these parts are things built for the many thousands of Mars rovers NASA is building, because, oh yeah, they're only building the one.



I don't think the issue is mis-management at JPL, though I'm not trying to defend JPL. It is short-sightedness on the NASA HQ side in not realizing that this kind of development project is going to cost more than they think. This is always going to be the case. The short-sightedness on the NASA side, too, is that they under-fund the possibility that their old Mars spacecraft won't die on schedule... they don't plan enough resources for there to be any extended missions. In just days, MRO's extended mission begins. Then, all of NASA's spacecraft currently operating at Mars will be doing so on an extended mission. Did they budget for that? Not to the level that it's going to cost. Imagine the relief they might have felt when MGS was lost 2 years ago. It freed up money to keep the MERs going.



"Blue Moon" has it right, though, that no organization but JPL is in a position to build a flagship-class mission like MSL. If you want to see any sophisticated missions to the planets to do the kind of science the public and Congress seems to think we should be doing out there, you turn to JPL. Their track record isn't perfect, but no one's is. These spacecraft aren't built on an assembly line with off-the-shelf parts. It's hard work and it's very challenging.



Understand, too, the problem with MSL was that, when Alan Stern came along, he changed the rules in mid-stream. Phoenix got gobs and gobs of money, well beyond its cost cap. So did MER. No one wanted to repeat the 1998 Mars mission failures. It was rather insensitive to change the rules when he did -- it would have been far better to decree that future missions, just now getting started, will be subject to tighter rules. Another thing about Stern's monkeying with MSL-- he tried to remove the 2 cheapest instruments from the payload -- this was like trying cut the cost of your groceries by deciding not to buy a 1-cent gumball on your way out the door. And while he tried to remove the 2 instruments (for cost savings of much less than 1 million), he added a 2 million sample cache that no one thought would be of any value (the Mars community largely came out against it because of its uselessness).



Stern had this vision of doing a Mars Sample Return mission sometime toward the end of the coming decade (this was some kind of weird political thing- there seems to be a constituency in the Mars science community for doing sample return, but this is not a consensus and the people who don't agree with this point of view are too busy DOING the ACTUAL Mars missions to spend time on the various review panels that make these kinds of recommendations to NASA). Never mind how do you decide where to go to collect a sample on a planet so diverse that no sample would be representative of the whole. A sample return mission would be 3-4 times more costly than MSL, and would depend on the success of MSL. It could not be done without MSL demonstrating how you land such large payloads in such small landing ellipses (to get as close to the thing you want to study as possible). Recognize, too, that MSL's aeroshell is about the size of the new landing capsule NASA is designing for people to land back on Earth. This thing is huge. And flying it through the thin atmosphere of Mars may help validate the effort needed for the crewed capsule.



People can rip on MSL all they want, but recognize that, without it, you're looking at a Mars program that will be reduced to camera-less upper atmosphere orbiters like the 2013 Scout and oh, maybe, just maybe, another lander or rover to some huge landing ellipse at some very low elevation-- meaning we learn nothing new (Phoenix, or MER in the past year or two) and we don't go to any of the dozens of interesting places that MGS, Odyssey, Mars Express, and MRO have been telling us about. At that point, you might as well shut down the Mars program because there's little point to it after that. We can instead focus o the Moon because, after all, its very exciting and we haven't been there bef-- oh, wait-- yeah, 40 years ago we did that...



And, by the way, where do people keep coming up with this $650M number for MSL? That was not the cost at the time NASA confirmed the mission and went forward with it. It might have been $650M back when MSL was just the apple of someone's eye, but, heck, I can dream, too. Can you even get a launch vehicle for MSL for $650M? Perhaps so, but could you get a launch vehicle for MSL if the entire project was $650M, and still have the sophisticated capabilities of MSL? Mars scientists keep telling the world that Mars has all these neat things-- a river delta, gullies that might actually have water in them today, volcanoes the size of Arizona, clay minerals that might have something to do with life, and so on... but for $650M you'd have a mission cheaper than Phoenix. You couldn't get to any of the interesting places the scientists have been buzzing about for the past decade or so. Granted, even MSL can't get to some of these (it would cost too much to sterilize it to the level necessary to visit gullies; it can't land at elevations higher than a kilometer or so; it can't go to the polar regions). Again, without MSL, you might as well shut down the Mars program... the easy stuff has all been done. What remains is to get to the right places and do the right science. Either you go for it, or you turn your back on it. A waste of money isn't a cost over-run on MSL, it is in sending spacecraft to Mars that do nothing of any value. And if MSL crashes, well, that's just part of the risk (oh yeah, and part of the cost is to help ensure that crash doesn't occur). MSL is an example that says "NASA still has a pair".

"When the National Research Council's Planetary Science Decadal Survey recommended the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission for priority funding, it assigned a cost level of $650 million."

The reason, we are using this number, is this is the number being used, when funding was being sought.

It is not the cost of the mission, that I am complaining about. It is about assigning a cost, that was unrealistic. To me it feels like bate and switch. If you don't want to get laughed at by the late night tv shows, then you must be realistic on what costs you assign to a project.

If you don't see any problem with these kind of cost disparities, then there is nothing I can say to make you see the light.

Just because an independent review panel, years ago, recommended that MSL be a $650 million mission doesn't mean that is the mission NASA signed up to do, nor does it mean that this dollar amount was based on any realistic assessment of what it costs to send a rover the size of a BMW mini to Mars and power it with RTGs. When Alan Stern came onboard and started looking for ways to gut the Mars program, MSL was not a $650 million effort and NASA had a budget that reflected the more realistic cost (and how much, percentage wise, by the way, did his Pluto mission over-run? Hmmm?). NASA signed up for MSL at the time the mission was "confirmed" and this was - I don't recall the date - but just a couple or three years ago -- and at that time it was about 1.6 or 1.7 billion. They knew that the mission NASA and the NRC Decadal Survey wanted to do can't be done for $650 million-- heck, Phoenix, as lame as it was, couldn't even be done for that. I come away from this discussion on NASAWatch thinking the people that read NASAWatch don't actually know anything about how any of this really works or what any of this really costs. Do you even realize that, no matter how much a project like this costs, the people doing the work are busting their behinds and not getting paid for all the hours they put in? Do you even realize that every effort is made to save costs while not compromising the safety of the mission? Far too many people in the space business pour their souls into this work for very little financial compensation (and NASA loves to take advantage of this passion, I believe), and it is only disheartening and sad to see the kind of whining I've been reading here.

MSL does have parts delivery problems but there are numerous other problems that management lacking discipline and adherence to good methods would have minimized. The responsibility lies within JPL and HQ management (oversight). I'd also put those design review board members on notice for, if not recognizing the root problems early, then not following through and pushing the issues.

Practically all NASA projects have cost over-runs. Going from a $1B to a $2B+ total cost is inexcusable. For the Science Directorate this is a large sum. Its also quite likely that JPL management knew they had to under-estimate the cost to get the design and payload approved and then expect from past experience that the additional funds would materialize. Mis-management of development is the problem, low-balling the initial cost has just made it look twice as bad.

Mesmerizing the public is not what will keep the Mars Program alive and healthy. We don't need expensive cameras on every mission. There is a variety of remote instrumentation other than optical cameras that we need to send to Mars. A strategic vision and management that backs it up will instill and lead to votes of confidence by Congress. The Mars Program objectives aren't bad but implementation is.

My opinion is that we're in too deep to step away from MSL. It might be too late to pull instruments off MSL to save money without causing design issues that would lead to greater expenses. So you create a watch-dog team, a tiger team to audit the program now, watch over their development work and methodology, provide guidance or enforce changes, and then deliver a set of lessons learned, problem resolutions in policies, procedures, rules with a means to enforce adherence. [Some would argue that the procedures exists in the books but HQ and Facility upper management is not enforcing them.]

Secondly, you delay launch. Maybe not two years but rather load up the Atlas V with SRMs and take a less optimal trajectory. The extra time bought (and it will add cost) will provide the time needed for hardware implementation and testing for assurance. NASA will have given it the best chance of success. If it fails, MSL, JPL, NASA will have something in hand from over-sight teams and real-time review, not from after-the-fact failure review boards. Win or lose, NASA and JPL have to put the necessary changes to project management into action now. Altogether, this will provide the best chance of success and a means to move on.

Guys,

If you are going to spend all this money on MSL development, how about building a half dozen or so before speding gigabucks on a sample return mission?

Incremental hardware costs for more copies would not be obscene. Lets get a return on our investment.

Mars_or_Bust proposed "Secondly, you delay launch. Maybe not two years but rather load up the Atlas V with SRMs..."

Sorry, but no.

Mars launch opportunities really do come on a two year, two month schedule. You can't just add SRMs and go a little later; if you delay, you delay for two years.

"and take a less optimal trajectory. "

The only "less optimal" trajectory available is the one that swings in by Venus on the way, and takes much longer to get there. Even if that trajectory happens to be available, it's a lot larger delta-V, and you'd have to redesign the cruise stage just about from scratch to allow it to take the higher temperatures.

No, you can't delay "just a little". If you delay, you really do have to wait for the next launch window.

I was just reading about a tunnel in Boston that is incurring a $1.4 billion overrun, so far. Sounds like an entire MSL-like project could have been funded for the value of just the overrun related to trying to dig one hole, in one city, and benefitting relatively few people (compared to MSL). But then maybe creating cutting edge engineering solutions, to operate brand new systems remotely for extended periods of time, in challenging environments, to conduct cutting edge science should be valued less than saving some folks some time going to and from an airport. Forgot to mention that the whole hole is over $12 billion.

All of the pre-Phase A and Phase A work is conceptual as is the cost estimate. It isn't until PDR at the end of Phase B that a program is formally approved by the Agency. So this is the cost that should be considered the "baseline" from which overruns are calculated. If I estimate $650 million early in pre-Phase A and get the idea sold for further study and the concept and technology development assessment phase grows the project in scope and cost, that is just part of the process of settling on a baseline which satisfies all the constituents and the customer who is going to pay for it. But at PDR, the project is formally approved and the Agency commits to completing the project. I don't know the history of the costs on this program. But if I interpret snippets from previous posts, it sounds like the program was sold as a concept for an estimate of $650 million, but that the concept and cost grew to $1.6 or $1.7 billion by PDR. If so, the cost growth is really only from the PDR cost to $2.1 billion, a more modest overrun. Look at NPR 7120.5D, approval does not occur until the end of Phase B. Everything prior to that is conceptual and "unapproved."

This is all just a drop in the bucket to the overruns in human space flight. Freedom was announced by Reagan for $8 billion and now ISS has cost us over $30 billion or more ($100 billion if you consider Shuttle launch costs and operations for the next decade or more). Constellation was projected by Griffin to cost $104 billion through lunar return, and it will surely be well over $200 billion before we get to the moon. Just suffice it to say the "pi" factor is in effect at NASA. Whatever the original estimate is in a NASA project, multiply by 3.14 to get the eventual cost. JWST is another example of this.

Anon, Confirmation is an excuse to Congress for a commitment. It's a joke if you want to use confirmation as the point to measure cost growth because you further endorse the centers to low bid to start the project.

MSL $650M is the cost without the LV and RTG when JPL was approved to continue their concept study. MSL SRR report life cycle cost was $1.1B

"People can rip on MSL all they want, but recognize that, without it, you're looking at a Mars program that will be reduced to camera-less upper atmosphere orbiters like the 2013 Scout and oh, maybe, just maybe, another lander or rover to some huge landing ellipse at some very low elevation-- meaning we learn nothing new"

"Meaning we learn nothing new"? Then why are we flying the Scout? Do you need to send back pretty pictures for anon. to learn something? You can do lots of science without 2D imaging, believe it or not, and arguably more for the same money and bandwidth.