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 15 2006, 07:29 PM
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14448 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
If you're in your 20's - you have Cassini
If you're in your 30's - you had Galileo If you're in your 40's - you had Voyager If you're in your 50's - you had Viking yes yes - lots of overlap and doesnt really sit in those catagories properly, it's a metaphor more than a real survey of the past - but there's nothing for our teenagers - where is their Voyager? Has there been a point in the last 40 years when the next really big mission wasnt at least in the planning stages? Doug |
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Mar 16 2006, 04:22 PM
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Interplanetary Dumpster Diver Group: Admin Posts: 4405 Joined: 17-February 04 From: Powell, TN Member No.: 33 |
If you're in your 20's - you have Cassini If you're in your 30's - you had Galileo If you're in your 40's - you had Voyager If you're in your 50's - you had Viking yes yes - lots of overlap and doesnt really sit in those catagories properly, it's a metaphor more than a real survey of the past - but there's nothing for our teenagers - where is their Voyager? Has there been a point in the last 40 years when the next really big mission wasnt at least in the planning stages? Doug If you're in your 60's - you had Apollo. Well, there has been continuity....in outer solar system exploration, the pioneers started, and the Voyagers overlapped the end of their solar system mission. Then Galileo was launched just after Voyager 2 flew by Neptune, and Cassini had flown by Jupiter and was on its way to Saturn by the end of its mission. Now we have New Horizons with Juno on the way. What disturbs me is, ignoring the technological advances that skew the comparison, Juno and New Horizons seem more on the scale of Pioneer. Now, if we look at solar system exploration in general, MSL might fill the roll of a big mission. I think it is really a mixed bag. There certainly is the lack of big missions coming down the pipe. But we are in much better shape than the 1980s, which, had Voyager and PVO not outlived their waranties, would have been limited to ICE, a "comandeered" planetary mission, the Halley flotilla, some Veneras, and Phobos-2. A major problem, after New Horizons, is that our targets are more problematic. The public can follow the idea of missions to the moon, Mars, Venus, Pluto, etc. But Titan, Europa, Ceres, Vesta, Io, and the Kuiper Belt? Most people have never even heard of the these places, including Congress. We are eating the fruit of decades of bad science education. -------------------- |
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