dr_orpheus

I spent the last few years building up an immunity to lunar dust powder

Never go in against a Sicilian when death (of a spacecraft) is on the line

I don't know how common it is, but this is the first time I had seen an announcement of a large solar installation with bifacial modules. I assume that the bifacial modules are more expensive, but I don't know what goes in to the math to make them worth it or not. Does somewhere snowier get more benefit from the bifacial solar arrays because you can get a lot of albedo from the snow?

> I think NASA doesn't do a good job sometimes tolerating risk and then everything is treated as needing safety-levels of risk mitigation without considering that a 1/100th cost reduction will not generate as much in parts failures.

I do absolutely understand this impression of NASA. But I also think it gets inflated because the highest profile NASA missions that you hear about in the news are the most expensive and least risk tolerant missions. But there is pretty large spectrum in terms of cost caps and risk tolerance to NASA mission classes. I think generally in order of descending cost/risk tolernace it is: Human Spaceflight, Flagship (i.e. JWST, Mars Rovers), New Frontiers (Juno falls here), Discovery, Explorer, Mid-Explorer (MidEx), Small Explorer (SmEx), Venture.

For an example in the Venture class you can look at something like CYGNSS. Constellation of 8 spacecraft to better understand dynamics of hurricanes by looking at ocean wind speeds. This is done by mapping doppler delay of reflected GPS signals off of waves in the ocean. Important science, super cool technology with mostly automotive grade parts. ~$150 million for the whole mission that lasted about 7 years.

Yeah, you got a lot of it and the ripple effect of things that go out from it. In addition to the extra mass of the camera and solar arrays, there is extra mass for the harnessing to connect the camera to the computer and engineering design for that as well. Integration of anything else on the spacecraft will have to go through Failure Modes Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA). Basically, this gets in to pretty detailed circuit design analysis and makes sure that any failure on the camera itself (like a short circuit or babbling idiot data bus) won't impact the rest of the spacecraft.

Potential cost of increased storage onboard the spacecraft if it is significant data volume. Cost of downlinking the data to the ground, time on the DSN is expensive. I think the cost data sheets for DSN usage are online and it depends on data rate, what dish you are using, etc. but costs for usage are on the order of thousands per hour and data rates from Jupiter are pretty slow.

The cost of the camera itself is likely on the order of a couple hundred thousand. I've seen similar costs for small radiation hardened cameras and star trackers. The difference in parts cost for some things can be absolutely insane. Passive electrical components certainly cost more, but for active circuits it can be insane. A radiation hardened equivalent of a $20 FPGA can be something like $20,000.

All told, cost of integration and use over the mission is likely at least a few million. But on a $1.1 billion mission it still doesn't seem like a lot.