You have the cost of spacecraft construction and the cost of launch, then you have the cost of operation.

If you don't spend on the cost of operation, then your return on investment for construction and launch costs will not be maximized.

Let's start with the compression algorithms. It looks like MGS is performing lossless compression each time anew for every image. No effort has been made to analyze previous image compressions to come up with a most efficient pre-stored image compression algorithm, and whether using this technique would improve the rate of image return. Read out the CCD and compress at readout, or at once in memory using the most generally efficient compression algorithm. These are black and white images, after all.

Second we come up with image transmission buffer size and image transmission times. You need a free buffer to store an image, and the way you get a free buffer is by transmitting previously stored images. The contraint here is Earth based antenna time to recieve the transmitted images.

The engineering constraints to the use of more antennas are power on the spacecraft and whether the use of other antennas would interfere with the collection of MOLA or other data.

There's also a question of risk versus return. We know what the current system is returning, and you also have to ask whether any modifications to that system would entail risk. Clearly, the use of more Earth based antennas would not increase spacecraft risk, as no modifications would have to be made to onboard computer programs.

We've spent a lot of money on MGS, adn the question is whether we are getting the best return on that money.

ep