/sci/ - Science & Math

this might come as a surprise to you, but when you're building something for an extremely specialized purpose that needs to withstand the harshest conditions, it might cost more than just the raw materials

>>12735859
2.4 billion is still way too much, I reckon I could do it for half

>>12735861
Why didn't NASA just pay /sci/ to do it?

Woah I had no idea it was that huge, I thought it was a tiny little shit.

>>12735854
>It's smaller than a small car
It's not, as you can see by the picture

>>12735861
My uncle Fred made a sturdy bookshelf out of galvanized tubes and reclaimed wood. A huge oak tree branch fell on it and it wasn't damaged.

He could probably build this rover for $4k tops.

>>12735874
It is roughly the same size or slightly smaller
>Engineers observe the first driving test for NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover in a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, on Dec. 17, 2019. The rover, about the size of a small car, weighs about 1 ton and is 10 feet long by 9 feet wide by 7 feet tall.
an average small car is 11 feet, though it is taller

>>12735854
$50 dollar hammers 200$ toilet seats.

All shitposting aside, it would be nice to see an itemized breakdown of the budget. How much for just the basic semiautonomous vehicle, how much for the landing system, how much for the seven science experimental systems, how much for the helicopter.

Everything is artistically hand made in the most expensive way by wildly overpaid retards in a fucking clean room

Then they do absolutely worthless tests like the one imaged

>>12735854
I wonder what the paper on their zip tie deployment for this looks like. What a circle jerk.

Why not build a dozen smaller rovers instead of 1 single rover. Then they could release them all separately. if one fails, nbd.

Beats the whole "Let's pray this single rover doesn't blow up" panic that the engineers put themselves through every time.

Are they not smart enough to figure this out?

Total cost of project is

C = M + N*S*T
>M = raw materials
>N = number employees involved
>S = average salary per employee
>T = time to complete
I believe the following estimates are reasonable:
>N = 10,000
>S =$100,000 / year
>T = 5 years
>M ≈ $50 million

This correctly estimates the order of magnitude at about $1billion, indicating that literally 99% of the cost goes into their salaries.

>>12735861
Give me some pvc and fillings and i'd pop this baby for half that. Give me $50 extra and ill even hook up the full stereo set up for free .

>>12736233
>N = 10,000
That is the main problem with governments, people in charge of other people feel more powerful the more people that are below them. This leads to making teams much bigger than needed because to these wankers "my team of 50" sounds more impressive than "my team of 12".

>>12735861
/sci/ + /diy/ (dee-eye-sigh) collaboration when?

>>12737260
>/diy/ rover
>planned mission life 60 days
>actual mission life 2 minutes

It's not expensive at all considering that this is a one-off item, so the price tag includes all the design and tooling costs. Designing a new mass production car nowadays costs anywhere from 1 to 6 billion dollars, so 2.4 sounds about right.

>>12735854
Probably mostly labour costs

>>12735854
Because of all the equipment on it, the testing each part had gone through, the cost of wages for however long it took to build, the price of materials and the nuclear power source inside of it retard.

>>12735861
>2.4 billion is still way too much, I reckon I could do it for half
Hove you seen how the fucken wheel alone work?

>>12737334
Its a two off. One is made that is sent up and a functioning replica is kept at JPL

>>12735854
>Literally how?
have 6 engineers work on it at 8k $ /month for two years and you're already at 192k $
the rest probably materials and dunno if launch costs are included in the 2.4 billions

>>12737334
still overpriced byt a billion I don't see what tooling they would need to build two of them.

>>12735854
>It's smaller than a small car
u wot m8

>>12735854
>Literally how?
have 6 engineers work on it at 8k $ /month for two years and you're already at 192k $
the rest probably materials and also launch costs and all the people monitoring the mission must be included in the 2.4 billions

>>12735859
How is it harsh? Its just a desert at low atmospheric pressure

>>12737404
$192K plus other things->2400 million.

>>12736233
Just buy hundreds of arduinos kits robots, send them to Mars and let evolution take its course.

>>12737436
you're right
I was just too lazy to continue the list

>>12735854
>you could buy 4 yachts for that price
What would you do with 4 yachts on Mars tho?

>>12735877
In a manner guaranteed to land semi-autonomously tens of millions of miles away after enduring cold near the temperature of liquid nitrogen and dramatically increased radiation for nearly two years, at which point his garage-built rocket skycrane will deftly lower his duct-tape-and-dw-40 rover onto the surface where it will function flawlessly for a decade or more.

>>12736230
The smaller ones have already been done. The newer and bigger ones can carry experiments and camera systems that weigh more.
>are they not smart enough
You be smarter, obviously

>>12735854
Why do these things always look so exposed? Is dust not a problem? Or is it so they can visually assess damage or something?

>>12737404
>have 6 engineers work on it at 8k $ /month for two years and you're already at 192k $
nice /sci/

Because it's a scam nobody asked me if I want to spend all this money so these Onions fuckers can send a toy car to a dead planet

>>12737463
Rule the bitch like im Jabba?

>NASA tries to justify its billion budget
>can only come up with a dried up planet
>shill this mars crap for decades
>all the drones support those bureaucrats spending tax payer money on a pile of dust


I love how atheists are still upset by having not found a luxurious planet like Earth so they try to cope with hyping a crappy planet

the atheist republic is a huge mistake

>>12735854
Why do they bother with the whole "clean room" bullshit?
Who cares if we bring foreign life to Mars, if the martians life forms can't handle chad earth bacteriums they don't deserve to live.

>>12737436
>$192K plus other things->2400 million.
When you order food delivery and they start adding the fees.

>>12737247
based

>>12737489
>nobody asked me
Thank goodness. What would everything look like if you did have control?

>>12737429
>sand in places
>rough terrain
>must include all sorts of equipment to sample and test environment and other objects
>must include communication and recording equipment
>all of this has to work without any maintenance or failures at all for several years

>>12737477
Probably because everything else is covered. Big box = more space inside for bad stuff to happen, maybe, like pressure changes or something.

>4 yachts
They're not going to Mars.

>>12737499
pasta/10

>>12735854
Everyone here forgetting the micro-equipment on board and chemical release system to test soils and melt down rock contaminants?

>>12736137
>just think of the amount of american taxpayer money the DoD were allowed to waste on expensive weapons that don't work like the brochure said because of this single space project allegedly spending these astronomical sums

>>12735854
>Most government projects are 'job creation schemes' for elite and highly-educated geeks so they don't get bored and piss off to help China make Black-Hole Bombs, an army of killer robots that can march up to the White House and nano-nukes that can crack the Hoover Dam and cripple the usa with ease
It's a small price to pay.

>>12736233
>>M ≈ $50 million
Dumbass. Try $500 million on the low end. All this stuff is 1) classified and can only come from certain suppliers and 2) custom and has no economy of scale.

>>12735854
R&D cost, gold everywhere, custom scientific instruments.
Mass production would make it cheaper but still shit would cost $1 million or more.

>>12736233
That's inaccurate. Think of the number of prototypes made, software licenses, delivery cost, outsourcing cost (scientific instruments), etc.

And this is just part of the overall sample return mission. They are planning to send a rocket to lift the samples into Mars orbit, another rover to retrieve the samples from where Percy left them and place them into this rocket, and another vehicle to pick up the samples from Mars orbit and haul them back to Earth, where they will be dropped, without parachutes, into the Utah desert. Not so much fancy cameras, lasers and drills as Percy, but more transport hardware.

>>12735854
Is this shit open source? It would kinda piss me off if it's closed source.

>>12735854
>lots of workers
>10 years of development
>space launch on a heavy lift rocket
>specialized equipment
>hyper sterile environment
>countless tests
>copies of the rover to run tests
>large facilities
>heavy power usage

It'd cost you more than 2.4 billion to land a yacht on Mars in good enough condition to sail around

>>12738672
Why do they need to be sterile when mars is unsterile?

>>12739733
so no terrestrial germs are transferred to the rover which would carry them to Mars. We don't want to infect the marti

>>12735859
It's all in thee Research and Development. that and the fuckton of shit that ups the costs like delays, graft, endless contracting and such as seen in DC.

>>12737402
You can't go to the store next corner and buy a space-grade portable nuclear generator.

>>12735854
does this include launch system costs?

>>12737475
i didn't realize the scales of the rovers varied so much. also those are some sick rims

>>12739817
The launch is only 240 million

>>12736140
Literally, forgetting How much the scientists and engineers and the IT guys the mathematicians and computer scientists are getting pay. Probably like 50% of the budget

>>12737500
Because our shit on mars falsifies any measured result. They just do not want to measure one day trace amounts of methane which come from some bacteria they brought with them

>>12739733
Because we do not want to detect our bacterial life on mars mistaking it as alien

>>12735861
The research and design probably is included

>>12737247
Nigga, in engineering land, "my team of 12" sounds WAAAAY more impressive than "My team of 50".

>>12735854
instruments ain't cheap