Earned value management is one way of doing this ( en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management ).

You need to schedule and plan and cost and build it in at the beginning (including what you're going to measure). Then each month (or so) your suppliers tell you what they've done and how much it cost, you put it all together and tell your customer. That way you can see how much you've done compared to what you expected to have done (schedule varience) and how much it costing compared to what you thought it would be (cost varience). You're less likely to have an 'OMG, there's so far to go' moment then.

There are no doubt other methods ...

This is a tricky one, for the reasons Mike pointed out. It's also tricky because our cash will soon start to split up; in the very near future we will have not only money given to the project as a donation or during a purchase, but we will also have charitable giving to fund our education programme. Then there is all the gifts from our amazing partners, many of whom are donating a certain amount of hours of engineering time each week, for example, which is very hard to cost, but is nevertheless a very valuable and valid contribution to the mission as far as we are concerned and we appreciate all these methods of supporting us.

Plus, our "Your Mission Needs You" campaign has just got off the ground with a growing number of backers working alongside us, doing what they do professionally and giving it as a gift to Lunar Mission One. You are absolute stars and we are very grateful.

So the total amount is hard to measure, hard to cost and, as Mike pointed out, may lead to complacency, lethargy or despair!! However, very soon you are about to start getting your LM1 newsletters and I hope that gives you a good idea of progress; the first issue is set to be a cracker! Oh boy, do we have news for you