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FIGURE C.2 CATE process for grounded‐based projects.
limitations. The contractor had no independent basis for evaluating the operations costs estimates
provided for any ground-based project. Those estimates were constructed by the survey committee on the
basis of the experience and expertise of its members. For some projects, the data supplied by the projects
was insufficient for the contractor to do a robust independent cost evaluation. Instead, the evaluation was
limited to technical readiness and risk, as well as identifying those elements of the projects that drive the
risks. Productive interactions between the contractor and the panels clarified a number of issues.
As would be expected, the cost appraisal process is highly dependent on both the maturity of the
project design and the detail and quality of the available technical information. Overall, the detail of the
RFI-2 inputs was excellent, although the majority of the projects evaluated were at a Pre-Phase-A stage of
development. In the case of space projects, the dominant cost elements of the space projects are the
instruments (20%), spacecraft system (12%), cost reserves (19%), and mission threat elements (18%),
corresponding to approximately 70% of the total mission cost. The threats corresponding to mass and
power, launch vehicle, and schedule were quantitatively evaluated by the committee at a general level and
then tailored as to how they were applied to specific missions. Ground projects typically were found to
have shorter development schedules than may be realistic and smaller cost reserves than may be prudent.
Because of the immaturity of some of the proposed activities, cost uncertainties are higher than
typical for activities moving into development either via NSF’s MREFC process or at the preliminary
design review stage for NASA and DOE. The committee worked with the contractor to develop an
acceptable set of quantitative metrics that could be used to fairly calculate the probable delta cost driven
by the assessed maturity of each mission. These metrics included estimation of growth of applicable
system resources such as power and mass along with mission-specific factors.
The end result of the incorporation of cost uncertainties is the cost histogram broken out by WBS
cost element shown in Figure C.3 for the JDEM-Omega (similar to WFIRST), LISA, and IXO missions.
The cost uncertainties are shown as “threats” in the figure. The incorporation of threats and risks results
in the CATE cost totals averaging 55 percent higher than the projects reported based on NASA
estimates. The associated S-curves are shown in Figure C.4. An S-curve represents the cumulative
probability that a project will be completed at the given total cost. The NASA cost estimates came in at
approximately the 10 to 15 percent point on the S-curve representing the statistically derived CATE cost
for the same mission. Based on historical metrics, it would be expected that the NASA estimates would
grow to approximately 30 to 50 percent on the S-curve at end of formulation unless efforts are made to
descope or simplify the mission concepts.
The costs for the JDEM-Omega, LISA, and IXO missions in Figures C.3 and C.4 represent the
full cost to NASA without consideration of ESA participation. The contractor also developed a cost
metric for a notional 50-50 NASA-ESA joint program incorporating a 25 percent “foreign participation”
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C-3