dusk for Dawn

dusk for Dawn

The Dawn mission to Ceres and Vesta was supposed to cost only $300 million when it was approved back in December of 2001. Since then, launch costs have risen, and NASA had approved an additional $71 million as a hard upper limit. Now, with word that some problems may force the cost to be another $40 million more, the Dawn mission is in danger of being cancelled altogether.

As NASA is a government operation, all that will come of this is "oops - sorry". If NASA was a private corporation, then several hundred people would be fired and some of them would be facing criminal prosecution for fraud.

There is only one way to prevent this sort of cost overrun from happening. If NASA wants a mission to Ceres and Vesta, then they should put out a list of mission parameters (such as the resolution of images and resolution of laser altimeter data), figure out how much they are willing to spend for that data, and then offer that money as a prize to the first company that can deliver. NASA would pay the $300 million only on delivery of the data. There would be no cost overrun; private companies would either deliver the data or they would get nothing. If NASA wanted a resolution of 1 pixel = 50 meters and a company delivered a resolution of 1 pixel = 60 meters, then they would get nothing. The total prize could even be broken up: $50 million for 1 pixel = 50 meter resolution pictures of Ceres, $50 million for 1 pixel = 50 meter resolution for Vesta, $50 million for 1 meter resolution laser altimeter readings of Ceres and so on.

Instead, NASA has spent their whole budget for the Dawn mission and achieved nothing.

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