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Because of budget. The closest thing to what you are describing that NASA has done recently was sending 2 rovers to Mars at the same time (Spirit and Opportuni
by billyhoffman 11y ago
Because of budget.
The closest thing to what you are describing that NASA has done recently was sending 2 rovers to Mars at the same time (Spirit and Opportunity). It cost nearly $1B dollars in 2003 money to do it [1].
Nasa's entire budget for 2015 is $17.5B
In contrast, NASA only spent a further ~$130M keeping the rovers going for the last decade. R&D, as well as getting stuff into space, is incredibly expensive.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover
- anigbrowl 11y agoHaving two rovers turned out to be insanely popular. Yes, it was expensive and NASA's budget is too small. But let's separate out the marginal cost here, because I'm pretty certain that if we had (for example) sent 4 rather than 2, it wouldn't necessarily have cost twice as much.
- stephengillie 11y agoMany of us abide in disbelief of NASA's inability to leverage economies of scale. But like SpaceX and other private agencies have taught us, maybe this inability is a governmental-culture issue, not some sort of weird space-related issue.