By-Pass the Moon?

Are you certain about this 90% figure? From what I am aware, the amount spent regularly is usually much less than half the cost of any space mission, not the majority of it. JPL's Mars Exploration Rovers, for example, had a total mission budget of roughly $800 million USD. Of that, a little over ~120 million USD was spent on those two Delta II rockets that sent them to Mars. For the Cassini / Huygens mission to Saturn, NASA spent roughly 2B on the orbiter, ESA spent ~$450m on the Huygens lander, and the Italians spent about ~$100m on the HGA/radar antenna. The Titan IV rocket that launched it was about $400m itself... Looking at missions that stay near Earth, the ratio is not quite so far toward spacecraft cost, but it is still higher than 1:1 for any moderate size mission. What do weather satellites cost, again? I've heard some estimates of just under $400m for the entire mission where the spacecraft is launched on a Delta II rocket... and those were going for
under $100m each until quite recently (recent cost spike in the industry in general).

At the same time, mass concerns do still have a significant affect on spacecraft design, much as they did during the Apollo era. But would that really make a mission half-a-billion more expensive just so the satellite can ride on a $100m USD rocket instead of a $250m USD rocket?

I do firmly believe the cost of space MISSIONS must be reduced, but frantic and fanatic attacks on launch vehicle cost are not currently the best place to start, so far as I am aware.

Sincerely
Michael

"ANTIcarrot." wrote:
About 90% of NASA's budget can be traced directly or indirectly to launch
costs. Bring costs down to CATS level and you can slash $10B from NASA's
budget *every year* and still have them do ten times more. Even if day trips
to space doesn't happen overnight, slashing/freeing up $10B from the federal
budget might be popular with a lot of people.

Or at least more popular than a bunch of space-lotto winners bouncing around
on Mars.

John

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
-Herman Melville