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

• marcusverus 3y ago
  > All told, the total cost of the Mars Sample Return mission is now about $10 billion. Woof. For a bit of perspective, the cost of building, launching, landing, and operating (for 5 years!) the Spirit and Opportunity rovers was $944 Million, according to the wiki. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover
  • pavel_lishin 3y ago
    To be fair, those were one-way trips.
  • appletrotter 3y ago
    It’s also about 4% of Elon Musk’s net worth.
    • QuadmasterXLII 3y ago
      It sucks that billionaires like Musk spend their money on vanity stuff like twitter or yachts when instead with their wealth they could be personally funding… a mars… um…
• cubefox 3y ago
  The US has the best space companies in the world, yet they tasked JPL, an inexperienced public organization, with creating the largest and most complex Mars lander to date. No wonder the costs keep exploding. I think Zurbuchen is right, they should either contract private companies to create the lander, or cancel the Mars Sample Return mission entirely.