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NASA's Europa Clipper Launch

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217 points belter | 2 comments | 14 Oct 24 15:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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. kens ◴[14 Oct 24 22:50 UTC] No.41843025{3}[source]▶
In the NASA budget, -$230M is the "change from base year estimate" for the launch vehicle. In other words, the launch vehicle ended up being less than half the price of the initial budget estimate. (This is unusual; almost everything goes up from the initial budget.) Originally, congress mandated that Europa Clipper use the SLS to launch. But after vibration problems turned up with SLS, it would take $1 billion to redesign the Clipper. They say the SLS would have cost $1 billion for the launch vehicle. So I think the way the math works out is that SLS rocket cost much more than originally budgeted ($800M more?) and it would have cost another $1 billion to redesign Clipper. So abandoning SLS saved $230 million compared to the original budget but saved $2 billion compared to what SLS would have ended up costing.
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2. panick21_ ◴[15 Oct 24 06:35 UTC] No.41845603[source]▶
SLS cost far more then $1 billion. They are not even gone hit the 2 billion $ number anytime soon.

So in reality this saved more money then the complete cost of the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and re-usability program.