The projected budget to develop a production ready system is just over $92M dollars. Approximately $20M of this cost is the satellites themselves, which come in at a unit cost of about $219,000.
The total cost for the earth stations is just over $16M. The total engineering costs, which includes the $55M Soyuz rocket is just over $56M. It is projected that the 10-year operating budget to maintain the system
will be about $4.8M. The table below provide more details on the cost estimates. Price with a "*" indicate estimates based on similar product offerings. Price with a "**" indicate estimates for items that need to be constructed due to lack of commercial availability.
For budgetary purposes, it is estimated that two levels of engineers will be used for the project, junior and senior. These engineers will be critical to the design finalization for the
satellites and the earth stations. For construction, integration, and testing of the satellites student interns will join the junior and senior level engineers. Third party contractors will be used
in addition to junior and senior level engineers to construct the earth station sites, which will include design and construction of the tracking satellite dishes. One primary project manager will
be tasked with ensuring progress is on track, and a licensing and launch planning director will assist with some of the logistics. The table below provides estimates on the engineering costs to deploy the 3SatImaging system. A key engineering cost for the deployment of this system
is the Soyuz rocket, which is estimated at $55,000,000.
Position
Time
Cost per unit
Total Cost
Design
Junior Level Engineering
996 hrs
$30
$29,880
Senior Level Engineering
664 hrs
$50
$33,200
Logistics
Engineering Manager
2988 hrs
$60
$179,280
Licensing/Launch Planning Director
2490 hrs
$30
$74,700
Construction/Integration/Testing
Student Interns
8632 hrs
$15
$129,480
Junior Level Engineering
9628 hrs
$30
$288,840
Senior Level Engineering
4482 hrs
$50
$224,100
Contractors
1992 hrs
$65
$129,480
Startup Engineering SubTotals
$1,088,960
Startup Engineering Totals (Including Rocket)
$56,088,960
Once the system is production ready, the engineering costs turn more into support costs rather than design costs. The table below projects the labor operating expense costs over the 10-year
lifetime of the system. 4 tech level support engineers will work the image post-processing workstations. 1 junior and 1 senior level engineer will be on staff to ensure the product is working
as expected and a full-time program manager will be on staff to ensure the customers are receiving the product as expected.
