I'm actually wondering if that number is too high. After all, they already had the ship. What did they have to pay for? 1. The extended use-time of the ship. B

I'm actually wondering if that number is too high. After all, they already had the ship. What did they have to pay for? 1. The extended use-time of the ship. But really all that did was push back the subsequent missions, the ship was already something they owned. 2. Probably a bit more maintenance on the ship once it came back because it was used for longer (and because they deliberately damaged it). 3. The cost of the initial food package + booster which blew up. 4. The cost of the new food package. China already had the second booster, so I'm not sure if the cost of that should be added (especially since China wasn't going to rebuild it, they were just going to scrap the mission it was originally for). 5. The cost of the MAV that was used to get Mark Watney to orbit, plus whatever costs are associated with launching another one to Mars. 6. The salaries of the astronauts on the ship (does Mark Watney get paid for his time stranded on Mars?) 7. The salaries of people at NASA who worked overtime on this (assuming anyone actually gets paid overtime at all, which they might not). Does that add up to $200B? I'm skeptical. From the parenthetical (Mars Mission) it seems the cost was meant as an estimate for how much a new Mars mission would cost (I forget if the book actually put a number on that to begin with), but the rescue wasn't a new mission.