Odyssey and MER Budgets Cut |
Odyssey and MER Budgets Cut |
Mar 24 2008, 09:11 PM
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 3 Joined: 12-March 08 Member No.: 4062 |
Just found out today at a MER all-hands meeting that both MER and Odyssey will each be suffering an immediate $4 million budget cut to help defray the cost of MSL. Read more here: http://martianchronicles.wordpress.com/200...rs-budget-cuts/
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Mar 26 2008, 01:18 PM
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The Poet Dude Group: Moderator Posts: 5551 Joined: 15-March 04 From: Kendal, Cumbria, UK Member No.: 60 |
Not wanting to kick a gift horse in the mouth and then run away with its hay, and maybe I watched too many conspiracy-filled X-Files episodes, but as brilliant as this news is, and thank you whoever tore that letter up... this reprieve sounds a bit quick and easy, doesn't it? So what was the point of all that? Was it The Powers That Be firing a "We're keeping an eye on your spending" warning shot across the bows of the Mars exploration community? A hand-slap for the MSL people, letting them know that other projects and programs might suffer if they don't get a handle on spending? A water-testing exercise to see what public reaction there'd be to possibly shutting down a rover? A similar test of reaction within the scientific community? A way of seeing if there would be any interest or approaches from private companies or individuals interested in funding/sponsoring space exploration?
Looking at the bigger picture, was this a subtle sign that perhaps, just perhaps, NASA is losing faith in the possibility of finding life - or even just evidence of past life - on Mars until they can afford a sample return mission, and this focus on the Outer Worlds is a shift towards conducting outer solar system exo-biology, on what many think are more promising candidates for life such as Europa, Titan and Enceladus..? Discuss. -------------------- |
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Mar 26 2008, 01:44 PM
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Interplanetary Dumpster Diver Group: Admin Posts: 4404 Joined: 17-February 04 From: Powell, TN Member No.: 33 |
Like I have said, at the LPSC, there was a great tension between the Griffin/Stern camp and the Mars camp, and the fact that on Griffin was furious over what he claimed was the Mars program's feeling of "entitlement" to the next flagship after MSL and a mission every two years. Griffin kept emphasizing that it could be worse - he is only talking about bringing Mars funding back to its average over the past 25 years, not zeroing it out like lunar exploration post-Apollo. He seemed genuinely angered by the lack of willingness of the Mars community to accept this (and, for the record, I am just reporting observations here, not my own opinion). I think this suddenly called meeting was a tactic, possibly to warn the Mars team that things could get much worse, so they had better quit complaining. Also, it may have been a tactic, assuming the planned to carry this out, to punish the Mars community for their "entitlement" attitude. On the scale of MSL, the amount of money in question seems suspiciously small for budgetary factors to be the real motivator.
What Griffin (and possibly Stern - it is difficult for me to tell what he thinks vs his serving as Griffin's messenger) didn't count on was that this would hit the press so quickly. The quick reversal leads me to think that the purpose was to scare the Mars community enough to make the post-MSL cutbacks not seem so bad. I think this was a bluff intended as a a scare tactic, and that they never intended to actually shut down a rover or Odyssey science. However, when, thanks to the story hitting the press in such a big and negative way, it backfired, the powers that be no doubt realized that they had better bail or end up with major egg on their face. -------------------- |
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