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NASA's Europa Clipper Launch

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217 points belter | 1 comments | 14 Oct 24 15:28 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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proee ◴[14 Oct 24 17:34 UTC] No.41839783[source]▶
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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kens ◴[14 Oct 24 18:03 UTC] No.41840107[source]▶
I was curious, so I looked up the budget. Development of Europa Clipper cost about $2.5 billion of which $1.1 billion was the spacecraft, $475M was payload, $200M was the launch vehicle (about $230M saved by not using SLS), $160M for ground systems, $60 M for testing. Formulation of Europa Clipper cost $1.2 billion. Operating it will cost about $80M per year.

Details on the Europa Clipper budget are at https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/nasa-fy-2024...

(Edit: fixed billion/million typo)

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frickinLasers ◴[14 Oct 24 19:52 UTC] No.41841204[source]▶
> (about $230M saved by not using SLS)

Since SLS launches are now upwards of $2B per launch by some estimates, how does this math work? Wikipedia also suggests $2 billion saved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Europa_Cli...

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1. philistine ◴[14 Oct 24 20:38 UTC] No.41841713[source]▶
I bet you it’s what the project would have been charged by the SLS program, but SLS would have lost a billion by providing a launch.