Evolution of complexity and cost for Planetary Missions throughout the development lifecycle

This paper provides an update to the complexity-cost relationship presented at the Fourth IAA International Conference On Low-Cost Planetary Missions [Bearden, 2000]. [1] A significant data set exists for a thorough examination of the relationship between on-orbit performance, cost and schedule. Since 2000, the number of missions captured in the database has grown, while maintaining a stable complexity-cost relationship. This study focuses on a subset of missions with similar costs to Discovery-Class missions over the last two decades using the complexity metric to examine system development cost at various development milestones. The further from the successful mission complexity-cost trendline the study missions began their development, the greater the cost growth at launch. The magnitude of this cost growth appears to be linearly proportional to this initial “cost optimism.”