Martha H Adams wrote:

I think this is a good topic, but it misses the elephant in the room.
In two ways.  Firstly, it's over *peanuts* of money at the federal
level.  I don't think it costs a "lot" to spend a few megabucks a year
to get data back from the heliopause and beyond.  Not on today's money
scale established in Washington.  *It's just not that much.*

And secondly, look at the military money going into Afghanistan and
Iraq (among others).  What's *that* cost?  What's the cost/benefit for
that?  Well, what's the benefit?  Vs, any scientific spacecraft out
there is extending our boundaries and we need all of that we can get.
If no "benefit" today it's a sure bet for tomorrow.  As vs that
military thing which costs us yesterday, today, and for two or three
generations to come.

    Having done government cost estimates the first thing you get clear before starting the project is how much the boss wants it to cost. The good news is most estimates are neutral but always towards a "reasonable" funding level per year so time and performance are tradeoffs.

    In this case the cost would be based upon the scope of project. Clearly it can be done on the cheap by simply putting the received data on the internet thus costing mostly antenna time. Or the cost can be all the manpower for analysis through publication costs at the high end. And then there are secondary costs such as what the antenna is not looking at and what the researchers are not analyzing to do this.

    As we are unlikely to have any probes in that region for decades it is clear the minimum level of recording and making available should be done. Anyone hanging onto a fiefdom and publications by presenting his team doing the analysis against nothing is making it cost what he wants it to cost.