https://spacenews.com/nasa-releases-draft-strategy-for-long-term-robotic-mars-exploration/Could this program be the beginning of the "CLPS" for Mars landers and orbiters...?
I'm kinda skeptical about this one. CLIPS could be a flaming failure. The recent history of landing attempts on the moon isn't that great. Now we have companies who are trying to make a profit trying to do so. I hope they work, but can't help but feel that the commerical part is mostly in the name. These are still mostly nasa funded missions. But they are contracts all given to companies with zero space experience.
Those low-cost missions would come in between $100 million and $300 million each, he projected, with the option to fly a single mission costing $300 million or multiple smaller missions with the same total cost. “It provides a good opportunity for the proposing community to get really creative,” he said. Those competitively selected missions, he suggested, could draw on experience from commercial partnerships such as the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program or commercial cargo and crew development.
Quote from: Space News articleThose low-cost missions would come in between $100 million and $300 million each, he projected, with the option to fly a single mission costing $300 million or multiple smaller missions with the same total cost. “It provides a good opportunity for the proposing community to get really creative,” he said. Those competitively selected missions, he suggested, could draw on experience from commercial partnerships such as the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program or commercial cargo and crew development.https://spacenews.com/nasa-releases-draft-strategy-for-long-term-robotic-mars-exploration/Would Starship cost less than $300M?
Would Starship cost less than $300M?
If I were to guess (and to be clear, this is just a guess), I think Starship is likely to be priced early on somewhere around $150M-$250M per launch. At that price, Starship will still be a great deal for customers at only about 1.5x the price of a Falcon Heavy while carrying much more than 2x mass and volume to LEO than a Falcon Heavy. The cost per kg in that price range would be somewhere around $1,500/kg to $2,500/kg to LEO. That would be on a full Starship, but keep in mind that a rideshare Starship for smallsats would likely be carrying much less than its full 100-ton payload capacity and so the price per kg would be higher.So in the middle of that range, $2,000/kg, we're talking about a 42% reduction in price below Falcon 9 cost per kg of $3,400. That's an incredible benefit to the industry. But it's not the order of magnitude or greater price reduction that I see many hoping for.
...These are still mostly nasa funded missions. But they are contracts all given to companies with zero space experience.
...usually they’re contractors to national space agencies and the profit is *guaranteed* as the “plus” part of cost plus contracts (a fixed multiple of the costs), so in fact there’s actually negative incentive to control costs....a contracting mechanism where a fixed price is paid for a fixed service, ...that profit is not guaranteed and they can end up actually losing money.So even without other users (and we hope there will be, as there is for commercial crew), this can be a significant win for NASA.
If Grumman had been being paid a fixed price, Apollo would have never made the end of the decade. Fixed price contracts are great for routine stuff, but for innovative, unique and experimental stuff they're extremely risky.
Actually both are less ambitious than I’d like.
No, I think it makes sense to be separate. I just think the relay satellite should include the Earth segment as well, in order to free up the DSN.
but I also think a single integrated multifunction constellation of orbiters would make more sense.
