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Why does it take so long? I mean 8 years to send a V2? what's stopping them rolling it out in 1 year? I don't understand the reason for such an extended times

by brador 14y ago

Why does it take so long? I mean 8 years to send a V2? what's stopping them rolling it out in 1 year? I don't understand the reason for such an extended timescale.

arrrg 14y ago
With what money?
- htf 14y ago
  With its annual budget of $18.724 billion maybe? Seriously, where does that money go?
  - MichaelAO 14y ago
    I watched a talk by Peter Diamandis where he said that around 90% of the costs (for a NASA rocket) is in labor. By 2020, we should be sending people, not another robot.
  - natep 14y ago
    For a start... * Operating their current missions http://www.nasa.gov/missions/current/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/missions/current/index.html * Designing and building future missions http://www.nasa.gov/missions/future/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/missions/future/index.html * Public outreach/education
    - htf 14y ago
      Thanks, that's a good list. However, one would be hard pressed to convince people to voluntarily fund this to the tune of 20 billion dollars a year.
      - sdfadsfa 14y ago
        But we have no problem spending trillions of dollars on wars and on bailouts. Awesome. Stu_pid meets mor_on.
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA It costs a lot to engineer and operate things that work in space.
cryptoz 14y ago
Are you an American? How much effort have you expended in campaigning to raise taxes and increase the percentage that NASA gets from ~0.4% to 0.6%? If you've spent less than a few years on the issue, that's the reason why they're going to take 8 years. Most Americans think that NASA is 10-20% of the federal annual budget. Most Americans want NASA to have less funding, do fewer things, and take longer doing them. If you want to have NASA move faster, you have to spread the knowledge that NASA is cheap. Then NASA can move faster. See efforts like penny4nasa if you want to help!
Sharlin 14y ago
This: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/20121204-the-2020-rover-in-context.html#item-382270359 http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/20121204-the-202...
danielweber 14y ago
Circumstances often lead to NASA building fewer bigger things instead of more smaller things. Which I disagree with as a result, because as soon as one of those few big things fails (which is inevitable no matter how smart NASA is), there are going to be massive Congressional investigations and talk about how NASA is wasting our money and how they need to be even more careful, which just means they have to build even bigger, even fewer, even more expensive things that just attract that much more attention when a failure happens. On the other hand, they can lose a $300 million project entirely and no one blinks an eye.
natep 14y ago
Limited budget is certainly a big reason, and another is the lack of a pipeline. When Apple releases a new iPhone every other year, it's not like they started development on the next model only after the current one is released. Development is staggered so that there is always something at each stage of development. As it says in the article, they will be leveraging proven technologies, but have not yet solicited proposals for instruments. This means they are still at the very beginning of the development process, and more money would only help so much. That's why the planetary.org post says that a higher budget would only move the launch date up 2 years. If they had started on a new rover 6 years ago with adequate funding, then we could be looking at a new rover in a year.

by brador 14y ago

Why does it take so long? I mean 8 years to send a V2? what's stopping them rolling it out in 1 year? I don't understand the reason for such an extended timescale.

arrrg 14y ago

With what money?

htf 14y ago
With its annual budget of $18.724 billion maybe? Seriously, where does that money go?
- MichaelAO 14y ago
  I watched a talk by Peter Diamandis where he said that around 90% of the costs (for a NASA rocket) is in labor. By 2020, we should be sending people, not another robot.
- natep 14y ago
  For a start... * Operating their current missions http://www.nasa.gov/missions/current/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/missions/current/index.html * Designing and building future missions http://www.nasa.gov/missions/future/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/missions/future/index.html * Public outreach/education
  - htf 14y ago
    Thanks, that's a good list. However, one would be hard pressed to convince people to voluntarily fund this to the tune of 20 billion dollars a year.
    - sdfadsfa 14y ago
      But we have no problem spending trillions of dollars on wars and on bailouts. Awesome. Stu_pid meets mor_on.
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA It costs a lot to engineer and operate things that work in space.

cryptoz 14y ago

Are you an American? How much effort have you expended in campaigning to raise taxes and increase the percentage that NASA gets from ~0.4% to 0.6%? If you've spent less than a few years on the issue, that's the reason why they're going to take 8 years. Most Americans think that NASA is 10-20% of the federal annual budget. Most Americans want NASA to have less funding, do fewer things, and take longer doing them. If you want to have NASA move faster, you have to spread the knowledge that NASA is cheap. Then NASA can move faster. See efforts like penny4nasa if you want to help!

Sharlin 14y ago

This: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/20121204-the-2020-rover-in-context.html#item-382270359 http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/20121204-the-202...

danielweber 14y ago

Circumstances often lead to NASA building fewer bigger things instead of more smaller things. Which I disagree with as a result, because as soon as one of those few big things fails (which is inevitable no matter how smart NASA is), there are going to be massive Congressional investigations and talk about how NASA is wasting our money and how they need to be even more careful, which just means they have to build even bigger, even fewer, even more expensive things that just attract that much more attention when a failure happens. On the other hand, they can lose a $300 million project entirely and no one blinks an eye.

natep 14y ago

Limited budget is certainly a big reason, and another is the lack of a pipeline. When Apple releases a new iPhone every other year, it's not like they started development on the next model only after the current one is released. Development is staggered so that there is always something at each stage of development. As it says in the article, they will be leveraging proven technologies, but have not yet solicited proposals for instruments. This means they are still at the very beginning of the development process, and more money would only help so much. That's why the planetary.org post says that a higher budget would only move the launch date up 2 years. If they had started on a new rover 6 years ago with adequate funding, then we could be looking at a new rover in a year.