QUESTION:
What is the actual cost of the Cassini mission?  Including the making of
the spacecraft and its probes, and all the passing of information back and
forth?  Just an approximation would be great.  I'm writing a paper on the
mission.

ANSWER from Jim Frautnick on October 27, 1999:
The cost of Cassini for 11 years of operations and hardware is about 3
billion dollars.  This does not include the cost of the launch vehicle
which was provided by NASA.