I don't believe that the situation is thus. We must be missing, or misunderstanding, something here. Maybe different versions of the plan have somehow made their way into the presentations. Clarification would certainly be most welcome.

I hope that you are right, that we are missing something. However, there has been only about one year of serious Titan follow on mission planning. It may be that the ideas are still in the early formative stage. If so, it's natural after such a short time. However, it doesn't bode well for the November decision between Titan and Europa.

This presentation also makes me think that just as with Mars, an on-going commitment to a series of missions is needed. The first would need to be an orbiter that can act as a relay for, say, 10 years. That can be followed on by one or more in situ missions that do direct entry. This is much like the mission architecture followed at Mars for landers and lander support.

In a perfect world with infinite bucks and steady political will, that would be the way to do it. But I think it will be very difficult to try to win two (or more) separate launches to Titan in a 10 year time frame - one for the orbiter/mapper/relay and the other for the lander(s).

Given that the flight time to Titan is a sizable chunk of the relay lifetime, we would need to launch the in situ lander prior to the orbiter arrival. This would be really risky, what if the orbiter/relay fails before the lander arrives? You'd lose two missions for the failure of one.

I'm not a costing expert, but I thought the $1B-box study put the standalone balloon too high.

But anyway,
1. I think the cruise stage, plus the cruise operations, add up to way more than the $50-100 you have above

2. Who says ESA is paying for a balloon ? It might be that CNES provides it.

Either way, the detailed ESA study of the in-situ elements is just happening now, so tempting as it is to
second-guess everything, it may be premature to make assertions of budgetary incompatibility.

Ralph, I was hoping you'd add clarity.

It would be really nice if someone did pay for a cruise stage and second launcher so the in situ elements could arrive after the orbiter is orbiting Titan.

Can you provide any additional insight on the relay options? Do any options under consideration include the orbiter carrying the in situ elements post Saturn orbit insertion so they can be released just prior to Titan orbit insertion?

No (I cant add much insight)
Studies are still ongoing. I don't know if that option has been ruled out altogether, although I don't
*think* that:s the baseline

Breaking news is that budget shortfalls will likely delay the next Flagship mission to as late as 2020 (from 2016). The additional time may raise budgets from $2.1B to $3B. This delay may also help align the NASA and ESA decision timeframes.

But the bummer is that this makes it all the more necessary to keep myself healthy. We could be looking at a 2030 arrive date at the prime target (either Europa or Titan). That would make me only 74...

http://www.livescience.com/blogs/author/leonarddavid/

Another possible consequence: If NASA also delays the decision between a Europa and Titan mission (currently scheduled for this Fall), this will be to the Titan mission's benefit, I think. Right now, the Europa mission is much better defined, and hence would have lower implementation risk. If the decision is delayed another year or two, that would give the Titan mission team more time to mature their architecture and design.

But my personal preference would be to keep the Europa mission at $2.1B and use the extra $700 to fund a carrier/relay craft for a European in situ Titan mission. Yes, I want my cake and eat it, too.

I think you are right, the longer they have to define the Titan mission, the stronger it becomes. Right now the definition of the ESA atmospheric elements in particular are very preliminary.

Another potential silver lining is that ESA was more inclined towards launch somewhat later, such that if the Jupiter mission was selected they would be launching thier probe around 2019 if memory serves. That undoubtably would be a complicating factor if we wanted to launch a Titan orbiter in 2016, but their budget didn't allow for their contribution to be ready for another 2-3 years.... and that contribution was supposed to hitch a ride on our probe for the trip out to Saturn.

In any event I hope they don't inflate the budget to 3 billion.... I'm afraid that would make the project just too enticing a target the next time a budget ax falls.

I don't believe my eyes - someone in this forum is AGAINST Outer Planets Flagship budget increase...
Yes, I understand what you mean, but - "He who doesn't risk never gets to drink champagne."
I think a $3B mission would get us much more science than a $2,1B mission - there would be more money for science instruments, instead of spending most of it to the spacecraft itself. What if ESA chooses some other L-class mission (XEUS or LISA) over Tandem/Laplace? I doubt that NASA can launch a serious outer planet mission for just $2,1B without international cooperation.

I agree that a 2.1 billion dollar mission runs the risk of being a 'bare bones' mission when we are talking Europa or Titan.

I'm concerned about two things. Firstly, both Galileo and Cassini were threatened with cancelation during their development periods. They were big targets for a congressman or senator (or Dan Goldin for that matter) to take aim at when trying to make a point about saving money. I always get mad when those arguments are made, because you could probably remove the paperclip budget from the Defense Department for a couple years and save the same ammount of money ... but NASA projects sound so darn big to the folks back home, so it "sounds like our representative is looking out for us."

Secondly, I belong to the "One modest Europa Orbiter in the hand is worth more than a mega Flagship in the bush" camp. How many times have we heard the argument, "if we wait a few years the budget will be higher and we can fly a much bigger mission" ?

Ten years ago they started work on the drastically underfunded Europa Orbiter (blame Dan Goldin). After several years of fits and starts it was canceled as its cost estimates were on the rise to a more realistic level (started around 300 million, was getting in the 1.4 billion range towards the end).

But hey, don't worry, they replaced it with the Icy Moons Orbiter.... a much better mission. Also, impractical, and hugely expensive, so it got canceled also.

Since that cancelation, it took years of politcal wrangling, and we are now in the final stages of selecting a practical, affordable, flagship mission. But, hey, if we wait a couple years it could be a bigger mission! Sounds great, right?

History has a way of repeating itself. I do NOT want to wait another 3-4 years on the (very vague) promise that it will be a bigger mission, blah, blah, blad. Lets take what we got and be grateful we have it.

Good point about Europa Explorer and JIMO analogy.


Just for curiosity, were Galileo and Cassini over budget, or was it just some silly money saving issue?

My recollection for Cassini was that it was over budget. However, that might have been a matter of how NASA budgeted things in those days. They never included the launch vehicle in the cost estimates, and I think had a tendency to hide the operating budget (aka... how much is it going to cost after you launch it?). So Dan Goldin might have wanted to cancel it because when you added in the Titan 4 vehicle and the 10 year mission time the costs were much higher than advertised.

In any case, what happened was that the CRAF mission (comet rendesvous) which was linked to Cassini was dropped, and Cassini had a redesign that included dropping the moving scan platform. It is rather remarkable to think that a 3 billion dollar mission is the downscoped version. (which does tend to lend weight to the argument that a 2.1 billion dollar flagship mission might be too tight of a budget)

Galileo ended up costing much more than was originally planned, but that was due to a LOT of factors, many of them not JPL's fault (the Shuttle was late, then had a lower payload than planned for, IUS canceled, IUS re-instated, and so on). I don't remember if it was actually over budget when they tried to kill it, or it was just a juicy target for Senator Proxmire (I think he was involved in it, lord knows he was not a big fan of NASA and loved making headlines with his "Golden Fleece" awards).

The presentations from the planetary science subcommittee are now on-line, and they are a rich treasure trove. http://www.lpi.usra.edu/pss/agenda/200806/

I'll be summarizing them in several posts (it's a wonderful day, and I'm not going to sit inside all day reading presentations!). I'll start with the findings on the next outer planetary flagship mission. In a previous post, I mentioned that NASA had delayed the launch to the 2020ish time, but raised the budget for the mission to ~$3B. From the presentations, it's clear that NASA decided that the mission that could be flown for the old cap, ~$2.1B to either target (Europa/Jupiter or Titan) was not worth the expense for the science returned. The missions are being delayed to allow additional years of funding to be supplied.

For the Europa mission, a number of capabilities would be added to the mission. I'll list just the highest priority here:

Narrow angle camera
Enhanced IR (spectrometer?)
Hybrid solid state recorder (presumably a lower capacity, very radiation hardened recorder for Europa orbit and a larger, less radiation hardened recorder for the Jovian tour)
28 month Jovian tour

For the Titan mission, it appears that the additional money pays for either a single launch with a solar electric stage or a dual launch of the orbiter and then the in situ elements. The presentation doesn't say so, but it appears that the goal is to allow the orbiter to act as the relay from the time the in situ elements (listed as a balloon and lander) are delivered. The solar electric propulsion stage presumably would allow the orbiter to carry enough fuel to delay the release of the in situ elements past Saturn orbit insertion and just prior to Titan orbit insertion.

These changes certainly address the key weaknesses of the $2.1B proposals. The presentations do not address the question of whether the decision on which mission to fly will be delayed beyond the current goal of this Fall. I hope so. While the Europa mission concept is very mature, the Titan concept would benefit from another year of maturation.

I don't know how NASA and ESA will decide between these two proposals. Both are excellent and both should fly.

2020? That's depressing.