Cost of the Europa Clipper program is around $4-5 billion. Can anyone in the industry shed some light on why these programs are so expensive?
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I was just thinking about how much pressure there must be on everyone involved in Discovery Class missions. People's entire professional careers, billions of dollars, so much at stake!
Is the pressure something significant, or is it spread across so many people that there is little trouble sleeping at night?
When you are on contract for something, you deliver to the contract, and are done when you successfully meet the customer's requirements. So in that sense you don't have the same exposure to the program risks.
However, I've been part of one-off science missions before, and there is a different feeling beyond the contract obligations, though it's certainly abstracted through the many layers of sub-, sub-contracts.