Quote from: Star One on 12/28/2012 06:55 pmQuote from: Blackstar on 12/27/2012 07:22 pmQuote from: Star One on 12/27/2012 05:35 pmI would favour taking all the money from the Discovery & New Frontiers budgets for however long it takes and putting it into this instead. As the second highest ranked priority after Mars sample return I regard the financing of this project as far more important than any project that either of these two programmes might be financed for at this time.It's fun to have opinions, isn' it?Is there any good reason not to go this route when money is tight? Yes.Have you read the decadal survey? Do you know what it says? Are you familiar with the history of American planetary science programs over the past thirty years?I'm guessing that the answers to all my questions are "no." But what the heck, here goes:-the priorities for the American planetary science program are established in the planetary science decadal survey. That decadal survey states the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you just asked. It states that when money gets tight, the first thing to do is to scale back or delay flagship class programs like the Europa mission. Only after that is done should cuts be made in other areas, like New Frontiers and Discovery. You can find the decision rules in the decadal survey. At no point does it say that smaller missions should be sacrificed for larger missions.-Europa is ranked second to the Mars caching rover in the decadal survey. Unfortunately, what this means is that it will not get funded in this decade. Even assuming a flat budget, or even one with a slight increase, the decadal survey does not say do both flagship missions. Now there are a lot of reasons why that happened (the big one being that the Europa mission that was presented to the decadal survey was a bellybuster and not affordable, and it took a blow to the head for the Europa community to actually come up with an affordable mission, which they have now apparently done), but them's the breaks.-if you want a good example of why what you proposed is a stupid idea, take a look at the astronomy and astrophysics program at NASA. They have sacrificed all their small and medium missions in favor of JWST, which is now eating their lunch. Focusing on a single large mission puts you in a situation where you will have one or two missions per decade vs. half a dozen or more. -if you want a good example of what could happen, look at NASA's planetary science program during the 1970s into the 1980s. They got into a vicious cycle of fewer and fewer larger and more expensive missions. The result was what many people call "the lost decade" in planetary science. You can see various effects of this, such as 17 years between Mars missions culminating in the very expensive Mars Observer failing on its way to Mars. It's a bad idea to fall into that circle again.
Quote from: Blackstar on 12/27/2012 07:22 pmQuote from: Star One on 12/27/2012 05:35 pmI would favour taking all the money from the Discovery & New Frontiers budgets for however long it takes and putting it into this instead. As the second highest ranked priority after Mars sample return I regard the financing of this project as far more important than any project that either of these two programmes might be financed for at this time.It's fun to have opinions, isn' it?Is there any good reason not to go this route when money is tight?
Quote from: Star One on 12/27/2012 05:35 pmI would favour taking all the money from the Discovery & New Frontiers budgets for however long it takes and putting it into this instead. As the second highest ranked priority after Mars sample return I regard the financing of this project as far more important than any project that either of these two programmes might be financed for at this time.It's fun to have opinions, isn' it?
I would favour taking all the money from the Discovery & New Frontiers budgets for however long it takes and putting it into this instead. As the second highest ranked priority after Mars sample return I regard the financing of this project as far more important than any project that either of these two programmes might be financed for at this time.
1. I have made a start on the decadal survey but what with Christmas & the new year haven't got any further than that.2. As to JWST one would hope that NASA would have learnt their lessons from the problems with the management of that project and would seek not to repeat them with any similar large-scale Mission. Also just because they have had issues with JWST I fail to see how that should mean that they will automatically have problems with the management of any future large scale projects.3. If your logic is accepted then what the heck is NASA doing starting another major project like building a second flagship Martian rover. The re-use of spares aside your logic would dictate that the cost of its development is bound to lean in an upwards direction and impact on other smaller projects.
The decadal survey says to pursue a "balanced" program of small, medium, and large missions. It says that if money gets tight, you do NOT cancel the small and medium missions only to pursue a single big mission. It says that if money gets tight, you delay or de-scope the flagship, and protect the smaller missions, existing missions, and research and analysis funding.
Advice which they appear to have completely ignored. The mood at DPS NASA night was positively sour when Jim Green confirmed that there would be no new Discovery selection until 2017. But apparently we've got money for another giant Mars rover!Those of us in the Not Mars (and Not Geology for that matter) planetary community cannot help but feel rather abused.
Quote from: simonbp on 01/01/2013 02:29 amAdvice which they appear to have completely ignored. The mood at DPS NASA night was positively sour when Jim Green confirmed that there would be no new Discovery selection until 2017. But apparently we've got money for another giant Mars rover!Those of us in the Not Mars (and Not Geology for that matter) planetary community cannot help but feel rather abused.The fact that OMB completely ignored the decadal survey was not lost on many people. The announcement of the Mars 2020 rover appears to be a reluctant acquiescence to do the decadal's top flagship recommendation--doing the right thing after exhausting the alternatives.
1-So much for your argument on balance when NASA themselves don't seem to be following that mantra?2-In fact have they not just done to a degree what I was talking about which is to take money from other smaller projects to fund a larger project in the form of a second Martian rover?3-As to reading the DS well the copy I have, unless, it's suddenly an extended version, is 410 pages long (as you no doubt already know) & having only recently got my hands on it I might be excused for not having read it all yet.
"On Earth, everywhere where there's liquid water, we find life," said Robert Pappalardo, a senior research scientist at Nasa's jet propulsion laboratory in California, who led the design of the Europa Clipper."Mars exploration is part of the bigger picture of human exploration," said Pappalardo. "However, part of Nasa's mission is to go explore and that should include places that are an extremely high scientific priority. It really is one of the most profound questions we can ask: is there life elsewhere in the solar system?"Whereas Mars might have been habitable billions of years ago, he said, Europa might be a habitable environment for life today. If it took 50 years before humans ended up sending probes and then landers to Europa, Pappalardo said, "we're going to look back and say we should have been doing this all along – and that would be tragic".
Quote from: Blackstar on 12/31/2012 06:05 pmThe decadal survey says to pursue a "balanced" program of small, medium, and large missions. It says that if money gets tight, you do NOT cancel the small and medium missions only to pursue a single big mission. It says that if money gets tight, you delay or de-scope the flagship, and protect the smaller missions, existing missions, and research and analysis funding.Advice which they appear to have completely ignored. The mood at DPS NASA night was positively sour when Jim Green confirmed that there would be no new Discovery selection until 2017. But apparently we've got money for another giant Mars rover!Those of us in the Not Mars (and Not Geology for that matter) planetary community cannot help but feel rather abused.
Whatever "Not Mars" group you belong to, you are getting more than the Mars people were getting between 1976 and 1996.
Ouch! What sort of instrument would they need to fly there to get that sort of resolution? Were they planning on a retroburn just before the land? That would melt almost anything. Would leave a big hole to land, too.
Quote from: baldusi on 03/22/2013 08:23 pmOuch! What sort of instrument would they need to fly there to get that sort of resolution? Were they planning on a retroburn just before the land? That would melt almost anything. Would leave a big hole to land, too.If you read the article all the way through, you see that not everybody accepts this explanation.Anyway, the plan is to map Europa first before any mission to send a lander, so that would answer the question. However, even if Europa does not have these ice spikes, it could still be very dangerous terrain. That said, NASA funded some neat technology work called ALHAT that allows a lander to detect the terrain and avoid dangerous obstacles. No landers have really done that before. If they continue work on ALHAT, it would be very useful for a lander mission.I always sigh when people start talking about submarines on Europa. That is probably a century or more away. Just landing on Europa will be difficult.
I hope that all that is stopping a mapping mission being funded is the plutonium.
I worked in the Andes and thus have seen the penitentes. I that does makes me assume they are there. But I've never talked about submarines. Rather that a lander would make a mess at retroburn, which probably would contaminate any samples.
Quote from: spectre9 on 03/22/2013 10:10 pmI hope that all that is stopping a mapping mission being funded is the plutonium.No. It's money.
Provided, That $75,000,000 6shall be for pre-formulation and/or formulation activities 7for a mission that meets the science goals outlined for the 8Jupiter Europa mission in the most recent planetary 9science decadal survey
A little politics but only for reference.QuoteProvided, That $75,000,000 6shall be for pre-formulation and/or formulation activities 7for a mission that meets the science goals outlined for the 8Jupiter Europa mission in the most recent planetary 9science decadal surveyWhat about this? What's that for?I thought Europa missions have already been studied over and over...