What is the cheapest NASA hardware on orbit?

[speedevil]

What is the cheapest ($/kg) item of non-trivial space hardware NASA has been closely involved with the design of? (one bit of trivial hardware included to show it's not trivial always)

I've not paid any attention to converting for inflation todays prices, for missions other than Apollo.
This list is 'unfair' - in that it's not making any pretense at comparing like with like, but I feel it's interesting.
Comparing mass in LEO, or for SLS, dry mass, assuming 10 missions or so.

JWST $10B, 6 tons, $1300k/kg.
Kepler $500M, 1000kg, $500k/kg.
TESS $200M,500kg, 400k/kg.
Orion  $20B, 10 vehicles, 60 tons, $300K/kg.
Apollo $150B, 500 tons (LEO), $300k/kg.
ISS (through 2005) $25B, 150 tons, $160k/kg.
HP Envy 5600 inkjet printer, $500K, 10kg, $50k/kg. (I am guessing at the $500K figure, but the parabolic testing mentioned will eat much of that alone).
SLS (empty) $3B, 120 tons, $25k/kg.

IDA $30M , 1500kg (three units), $20K/kg.

[bad_astra]

NASA didn't build it but...
 AMSAT-Oscar 6 was built primarily by Goddard ham employees, from what I recall reading. It was the first OSCAR launched a piggyback on a NASA payload, their previous birds were launched on USAF as piggybacks, and AMSAT did not exist until this time.


AMSAT OSCAR 6: $15000  18.2kg  launched 1972. Its sibling OSCAR 7 is still operational, the oldest operational comsat in orbit.

[deruch]

What is the cheapest ($/kg) item of non-trivial space hardware NASA has been closely involved with the design of? (one bit of trivial hardware included to show it's not trivial always)

I've not paid any attention to converting for inflation todays prices, for missions other than Apollo.
This list is 'unfair' - in that it's not making any pretense at comparing like with like, but I feel it's interesting.
Comparing mass in LEO, or for SLS, dry mass, assuming 10 missions or so.

JWST $10B, 6 tons, $1300k/kg.
Kepler $500M, 1000kg, $500k/kg.
TESS $200M,500kg, 400k/kg.
Orion  $20B, 10 vehicles, 60 tons, $300K/kg.
Apollo $150B, 500 tons (LEO), $300k/kg.
ISS (through 2005) $25B, 150 tons, $160k/kg.
HP Envy 5600 inkjet printer, $500K, 10kg, $50k/kg. (I am guessing at the $500K figure, but the parabolic testing mentioned will eat much of that alone).
SLS (empty) $3B, 120 tons, $25k/kg.

IDA $30M , 1500kg (three units), $20K/kg.

Seems like some places you're using the "hardware" cost and some places you're using the total mission/program cost which includes much besides just the hardware.

[speedevil]

What is the cheapest ($/kg) item of non-trivial space hardware NASA has been closely involved with the design of? (one bit of trivial hardware included to show it's not trivial always)

I've not paid any attention to converting for inflation todays prices, for missions other than Apollo.
This list is 'unfair' - in that it's not making any pretense at comparing like with like, but I feel it's interesting.
Comparing mass in LEO, or for SLS, dry mass, assuming 10 missions or so.

JWST $10B, 6 tons, $1300k/kg.
Kepler $500M, 1000kg, $500k/kg.
TESS $200M,500kg, 400k/kg.
Orion  $20B, 10 vehicles, 60 tons, $300K/kg.
Apollo $150B, 500 tons (LEO), $300k/kg.
ISS (through 2005) $25B, 150 tons, $160k/kg.
HP Envy 5600 inkjet printer, $500K, 10kg, $50k/kg. (I am guessing at the $500K figure, but the parabolic testing mentioned will eat much of that alone).
SLS (empty) $3B, 120 tons, $25k/kg.

IDA $30M , 1500kg (three units), $20K/kg.

Seems like some places you're using the "hardware" cost and some places you're using the total mission/program cost which includes much besides just the hardware.

Quite - it's often very hard to get numbers quickly, and if you have a program like IDA, where as I understand it only three units were intended to be made including a spares one, ...

I don't think it makes a huge amount of difference in most cases.
SLS, while $3B per might be a somewhat fair cost, even if it went into 'mass production', is not going to hit .3B.
Plus, to a degree, the things which make the per-unit cost high are the same things that make the program cost outside of individual production costs high for a given article.

SLS would not have been much cheaper on the engineering cost if they had only (will only?) make one.

And yes, in some ways including the program cost is not fair as for example for ISS, there was a lot of redesign - but this is only unfair if you believe lessons have been learned to reduce that.