MSL schedule delay? Options

[vjkane]

The most recent Aviation Week and Space Technology (9/8) has the following tidbit in a piece on NASA schedule delays:

"On the robotoic front, the testing schedule for a critical instrument for the Mars Science Laboratory -- dubbed SAM for Sample Analysis at Mars -- may delay launch of the advanced rover from its 2009 planetary window into 2011."

[gallen_53]

My reading of the tea leaves is the whole Mars Program is in serious trouble. JPL tried to do too big of a technological jump from MER to MSL and hit a brick wall. My impression is that we will be shifting away from Mars and focusing more on Venus probes (I am NOT happy about this). Both planets are extremely interesting. If anything MER showed Mars to be more interesting than we realized.

Venus exploration had previously not received the same attention as Mars. This was mainly due to the short life expectancy of anything reaching the Venusian surface (3 hours tops). It's politically difficult to justify the expense of sending something to another world that only survives for a couple hours (same problem with atmospheric probes to gas giants). That sort of argument was one of the reasons why MER was such an excellent concept, i.e. provides good science and political returns at a reasonable cost. Venus exploration has an additional political advantage in that it can be leverage against Global Warming concerns, i.e. the Venusian climate was ruined by a CO2 thermal runaway. Also Venusian EDL (Entry, Descent and Landing) tends to be easier than Martian EDL due to the denser atmosphere of Venus. The obvious downside with Venus is the horrific conditions on the Venusian surface, i.e. once you're below 50 km altitiude, it's raining sulfuric acid and you have to worry about supercritical CO2. I'm hoping we can get a Venus program up-and-running before the Mars program turns into a complete train wreck. We need to have some planetary program running in order to maintain our engineering expertise.

[vjkane]

My impression is that we will be shifting away from Mars and focusing more on Venus probes... I'm hoping we can get a Venus program up-and-running before the Mars program turns into a complete train wreck. We need to have some planetary program running in order to maintain our engineering expertise.

I've not seen anything suggesting that a decrease in emphasis on Mars will translate to an increase in Venus mission funding. Also, any landed Venus mission comes with lots of technology development, and hence programmatic and budget risk. I understand that this is why Venus has tended to do poorly in Discovery proposal competitions.

I would personally welcome an increased emphasis on Venus for the reasons you mention, however. A smaller Mars program might lead to less aggressive mission goals, and hence (perhaps) less risk of programs blowing up.

[gallen_53]

I've not seen anything suggesting that a decrease in emphasis on Mars will translate to an increase in Venus mission funding.

There are alot of Venus pre-Phase A proposal studies in the pipeline. The new focus appears to be towards Venus probes and sample returns from the asteroids and the Moon (Genesis and Stardust design derivaties) . Unfortunately, the money isn't there for outer planet work and MSR is off the table. I'm glad that Cassini is RTG powered because it maybe our only asset around Saturn for a long, long time. This is really frustrating because Cassini/Huygens gave us only a tiny glimpse of what an interesting world Titan is.