The cost was estimated using the approximate values: $200 Million per orbiter plus $1 Million per transmitted Watt. The additional hardware costs required for the transceiver for the ground terminals are approximated as $5,000. This is a rough estimate and should be competitively contracted out to ensure proper pricing and space hardened components. The breakdown of costs for the satellites is summarized in Table 15. All costs provided in the tables below are in millions of dollars.

Table 15. Costs per Satellite

The estimate total cost of the entire system is shown in Table 16.

Table 15. MARNET total estimated costs

Therefore the total cost for this system will be approximately $2.3 billion dollars. This system however will provide unprecedented high speed communications to Mars. A more pertinent metric is cost per Mbit transmitted from Mars to Earth. This can be thought of as the information that is being gathered from Mars and sent back to Earth (thus increasing knowledge and having value). Assuming this system will last for 15 years with minor upgrades and repairs, the total number of bits sent can be approximated by (1) and the cost per Mb is calculated in (2).

(1)

(2)

Therefore, the true cost of the link is only $0.07 per Mb. Considering the possibilities of exploration and research this system will provide an excellent return on investment. Also, since this system is a long term investment in the future of human exploration, 7 cents/Mb is a fraction of the wealth of knowledge that will be gained from this network.

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