Is Europa really the "highest priority" of the community?, Cleave said it was at LPSC? |
Is Europa really the "highest priority" of the community?, Cleave said it was at LPSC? |
Mar 15 2006, 05:50 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2547 Joined: 13-September 05 Member No.: 497 |
From Emily's LPSC blog: "Bob Pappalardo would not sit down until he got Cleave to acknowledge that Europa is the consensus highest priority of the planetary science community."
Cleave was obviously poorly prepared for this session, but I don't see that this acknowledgement is either meaningful or particularly accurate. If Europa were the "highest priority" of the PS community as a whole, then one might wonder why we were spending all this money on Mars. I could easily imagine that Europa is the highest priority of the outer planets community, but frankly I was surprised when Europa Orbiter appeared in the '07 budget (presumably the result of some serious lobbying on someone's part.) It was pretty obvious to me then that there would be no money for it, especially in the aftermath of JPL running the old EO project into the ground with cost overruns and engineering upscopes. (And JIMO is best forgotten.) Don't get me wrong, I would love to be involved with a Europa mission (we did what I think was a good proposal design for EO) but I don't see either the money or the political support being there in the near term. I know it's frustrating, but one has to be realistic, and it might help to avoid the aura of entitlement that I perceive is building in some parts of the community (not referring to you, Bob). Of course, I am just a lowly engineer. -------------------- Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.
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Mar 16 2006, 12:45 AM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8789 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Sad to see all this intramural political wrangling interfering with the serious task of saving NASA's planetary exploration program. This very public lack of unity on the part of the planetary science community will only serve to justify the cuts in the minds of senior NASA and Bush administration leaders.
It's time to draft a consolidated, universally-supported agenda and start hammering it home to the bean-counters!!! I frankly don't care whether Europa, Titan, or Enceladus is chosen as the prime focus; the fact is that all of these bodies are worthy of Flagship-class missions, and the main goal should be to get such a mission funded. This petty bickering is undermining UMSF. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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