Re: Limits of reliability or is 99.999999999% realistic

[hardie () equinix com]

> Also, NASA's budget for a POP on Mars is a little higher than my budget
> for a POP in Colorado Springs.  Hell, their budget for a single lander
> is probably higher than my budget for an entire data center.

It depends on where the lander goes, and how big the data center is.

The develpment and operations costs for the Mars Pathfinder rover were
25 million.

I don't have the numbers splitting that into development
vs. operations, but in another example, the total mission cost of the
Lunar Prospector, including all of the instrument development costs
was 63 million.  Amortizing the development costs over all the
missions the instruments will be reused on and (saddle the prospector
with its share of the instrument costs it got to reuse), and the
"built" mission costs work out to be under 20 million.  I admit, the
Lunar Prospector's landing was a bit spectacular, but it wasn't that
expensive.

You can build nice data centers for these costs, I admit, but the
costs aren't as different as you might think.
                                regards,
                                        Ted Hardie