Budget

Project Budget

The project budget consists of the materials, equipment, supplies, personnel, and miscellaneous costs associated with the mission. For estimation purposes, supplies and miscellaneous costs are grouped as a single overhead rate of 15% on top of the cost estimate. Personnel costs are considered to be $125 for each person-hour (includes pay and benefits). Materials are the parts and raw material needed to make the device, and equipment is the ground support equipment needed to test/validate the device.

Table Header Key: M: Materials, E: Equipment, P: Personel, O: Overhead, T: Total

Sub-System	Description	M ($M)	E ($M)	P ($M)	O ($M)	T ($M)
Comm.	Travelling Wave Tube Amplifier TWTAs are commonly used; however, their expected life span is only 15 years. R&D cost will be associated in further radiation-hardening the design, and ensuring long shelf life. R&D estimated at 2 million. A flight-qualified TWTA is approximately $2.5M, and the payload has 10 of them. Test equipment can be re-used for each TWTA, so this is also a minimal cost.	25	1	2	3	31
Comm.	Dish Antenna, 50m A dish of this size has not been made before, so the NRE and materials cost could easily be $75M for a 50-meter dish that is space-qualified. Assuming 20 people develop the dish for 2 years results in 250000 people-hours. Ground support equipment could easily be $20M to support testing such a large antenna.	75	20	31	19	145
Propulsion	Heavy-Lift Launch Vehicle The Russian Proton launch vehicle has an overall cost of $85M, plus $4302/kg. For a 10000-kg spacecraft, launch cost is $128M. There is no R&D cost for this item. (Ref 1)	0	128	0	0	128
Propulsion	HiPEP Ion Thruster The HiPEP design completed a Phase 1 study and will require future funding for Phase 2 (model) and Phase 3 (flight). Assuming development takes 5 years and 20 people per year, full time, this requires 624000 person-hours. Materials are estimated at $20M, and pressurized chamber tests are estimated at $2M (a single chamber).	20	2	78	15	115
Propulsion	Xenon Fuel for Ion Thruster (4179 kg) Xenon is required to fuel the HiPEP thruster. There is no R&D cost associated with the gas, only a materials cost of $120 per 100g (Ref 2).	5	0	0	0	5
Power	SAFE-400 Nuclear Reactor The SAFE-400 reactor still needs R&D to produce a prototype and working product. Assuming development takes 8 years and 40 people per year, full time, this requires 2 million person-hours. Materials are estimated at $120M. Test equipment is estimated at $40M due to the safety risks involved with radioactivity.	120	40	250	62	472
Power	Reactor Fuel (Uranium) After completing the full process of mining through enrichment, UO₂ costs approximately $2500 per kilogram. Mission requirements will depend on the efficiency of the reactor; a conservative estimate of 4000-kg is made here. (Ref 3)	10	0	0	0	10
Structures	Spacecraft Structure The spacecraft structure needs to be quite durable to withstand space debris. It also needs to withstand significant interstellar radiation. The methodology for this design is well-known, so development could take 2 years with 10 people, full time, for a total of 125000 person-hours. Materials will likely be around $20M, and support equipment will be significantly cheaper for assembly.	20	1	16	2	39
Electronics	Rad-hard communication/control electronics The mission duration is unprecedented, leading to development of extremely rad-hard electronics that must undergo extensive software certification as well. A conservative estimate is $40M for electronics, combined with 10 people for 2 years of software validation (125000 person-hours).	40	0	16	8	64
Electronics	Rad-hard imaging components Imaging components that can withstand the space environment are also well-developed and used for various modern solar observation missions and the older Voyager missions. Estimating $10M for the imaging sensors, combined with 10 people for 1 year of software validation (62000 person-hours).	10	1	8	3	22
Misc.	Spacecraft Integration and Validation Once all of the subsystems have been developed, there is a substantial amount of integration that needs to be performed. Likely this will take 2 years with about 50 people, full time, at 624000 person-hours. Integrated system testing will also require a limited amount of ground support equipment.	0	10	78	13	101
	Subtotal					1132
	Project Overhead (mgmt & related) @ 15 %					170
	Total					1302

The cost for the spacecraft is estimated to be $1.3 billion. Additional costs will be incurred for ground support, especially in the communications infrastructure.

The estmate for the three 4000 element antenna arrays is 5 billion. This cost will be shared among the other DSN users. Also, this upgrade does not need to happen immediately. The current DSN is sufficent for tracking the spacecraft for most of the journey to Epsilon Eridani.