Anyone who has ever worked in an engineering consulting business knows how quickly you can burn through cash on a project. I've been personally responsible for many multi-thousand dollar Microsoft Word documents. Many consults bill $100+ an hour, and when you spread that across a multi-person team it adds up quickly.

Aaaaand ... if they were government scientists / engineers the dollar figure is more of a book keeping thing since they are employees and get paid regardless of what they were working on.