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