Scientists sent a rocket to Mars for less than it cost to make “The Martian”
It looks like their payload was 2,900 lbs to orbit, and then they used engines on the orbiter to spiral up and enter mars injection orbit. Total scientific payload was only 30 lbs.<p>It's unclear from Wikipedia whether the booster put it into LEO or closer to GTO, but it appears it has has the capability to put 3k lbs near GTO.<p>For contrast, a Falcon 9 can put 18k lbs in GTO for $62M, so maybe a 1,800 lb scientific payload to Mars. But that doesn't include payload costs and payload development cost, so probably well over $100M. And building a probe in 18 months has to be really hard.<p>It will be interesting if Falcon 9 prices drop because of re-usability, say to $30M, whether that will open up the opportunity to do lots of custom probes to inner planets and asteroid belt.