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I had the same feeling. A lot of the things that NASA develops internally are mindblowing (e.g. the Mars rovers or the Casini probe, both developed by JPL), but

I had the same feeling. A lot of the things that NASA develops internally are mindblowing (e.g. the Mars rovers or the Casini probe, both developed by JPL), but everything subcontracted to Boeing or Lookeed endup uber delayed and hyper expensive.

nickik 6y ago
If you are honest with yourself, the JPL missions are often insanely expensive. The Curiosity rover was supposed to be 1.5 billion, but ended up 2.5 billion, and the main explanation of that was 'to develop a new landing mechanism'. Ok, I guess. And now Perseverance is again 2.5 billion despite large parts of the rover, landing system and so on, were already 95% developed. Not to mention it took 8+ years from Curiosity to Perseverance. Space Nerds bitch less about these programs since they at least are successful compared to the human part of NASA but if you really look at the achievement per $ its not that fantastic.
- executive 6y ago
  Perseverance has plenty of sub-contracted parts. For example, Maxar built several components: https://blog.maxar.com/space-infrastructure/2021/inside-perseverance-how-maxar-robotics-will-enable-a-historic-mars-mission https://blog.maxar.com/space-infrastructure/2021/inside-pers...
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > Not to mention it took 8+ years from Curiosity to Perseverance. That is because the required orbit window is only once every ... 26? moments or such.
dlgeek 6y ago
It's also worth noting that technically JPL contracts to NASA... It's actually part of Caltech under contract to NASA rather than a direct NASA organization.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  I think it's somehow related to JPL's need to pay investors. Which doesn't exist.