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 21 2006, 07:44 PM
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14448 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
I think JUNO might actually do harm for the 'Europan' cause.
Imagine the discussion up on the hill, "They're pitching for a mission to Europa" "Where's that?" "It's one of the moons of Jupiter, the one that's made of icebergs or something" "Didn't we just DO Jupiter with that JANO or JOURNO or something?" "Hmm - you're right - I say we go somewhere else" I'm sure JUNO is of excellent scientific value, but you can see it leading toward another pause in Jovian exploration. Doug |
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Guest_AlexBlackwell_* |
Mar 21 2006, 08:03 PM
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Guests |
I think JUNO might actually do harm for the 'Europan' cause...I'm sure JUNO is of excellent scientific value, but you can see it leading toward another pause in Jovian exploration. I'm not too sure of this. The Level 1 science objectives in the Decadal Survey for the Flagship-class "Europa Geophysical Explorer" are very distinct from the New Frontiers-class "Jupiter Polar Orbiter with Probe(s)" aka Juno. While the latter may contribute second tier science for the former, and politicians might seize on this continue delaying a Europa mission, the EGE Level 1s remain. So as long as the scientists have any input in the process, I don't see Juno doing any real harm to a Europa mission. |
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Mar 21 2006, 10:36 PM
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I'm not too sure of this. The Level 1 science objectives in the Decadal Survey for the Flagship-class "Europa Geophysical Explorer" are very distinct from the New Frontiers-class "Jupiter Polar Orbiter with Probe(s)" aka Juno. While the latter may contribute second tier science for the former, and politicians might seize on this continue delaying a Europa mission, the EGE Level 1s remain. So as long as the scientists have any input in the process, I don't see Juno doing any real harm to a Europa mission. Yeah. The thing about New Frontiers (and Discovery) is that they are on entirely separate funding tracks from the money provided for the unique Flagship missions, and the specific selection of missions to various Solar System targets for both those competitive programs is supposed to be wholly separate from the actual total amount of money provided to both programs. So -- unless an NF mission specifically takes a bite out of the science goals for Europa itself -- there should be no connection at all between the particular set of missions selected by the review board for the NF program, and the amount of funding that Europa Orbiter gets. Juno is entirely a nonbiological mission aimed at Jupiter itself -- not only will it not make any astrobiologcal studies, but the current plans are for it not to make any observations whatsoever of any of Jupiter's moons (and its orbit won't even let it come close to Europa, although theoretically they could set up close flybys of Ganymede or Callisto). Concerning the distribution of money between big Flagship missions and smaller space-science missions as a whole, however, the OPAG site has just reprinted some useful new documents -- confirming that, if push comes to shove, space scientists prefer funding smaller missions (and providing general research & technology money) to funding bigger ones: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/science_cuts.pdf http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/07_budget_bagenal.pdf http://www.house.gov/science/hearings/full...h%202/index.htm I haven't looked at the last of those documents yet, but the heads of NASA's four current space science subdivisions all agree with the philosophy already noted by Emily: usually, the bigger individual projects are, the LESS scientifically cost-effective they are. They prefer -- in order of priority -- research, then technology development, then small missions, then medium-sized ones, then flagship ones. But the main flagship projects for the Universe and Sun-Earth divisions -- the Webb Telescope and the Solar Dynamics Observatory -- are already well underway, and cutting their funding now would just prolong the total length of the projects and thus increase their total cost. And the Earth Science division's flagship, the GPMM mission, has already been repeatedly delayed, so the director of that branch says he'd prefer instead to delay the somewhat cheaper Landsat replacement. By contrast, the Solar System (non-Mars) division's main flagship mission, Europa Orbiter, hasn't been started yet, and so delaying it is much more practical. (We could also consider delaying MSL -- since it's just getting started -- but Mars missions remain one of NASA's Holy of Holies.) One should also consider Fran Bagenal's comment: "I feel on thin ice asking for additional funds -- new money -- when a second glance at the NASA budget reveals the current rhino in the room to be the fact that we have lost control of mission cost growth." So perhaps what we should be focusing on right now is: are there any ingenious new ways to explore the moons of the outer satellites with New Frontiers-class missions? The traditional line has been that there aren't, but then this has been based on a confidence that Flagship-class missions WILL be flown to them. The loss of those makes a careful reexamination of ideas for NF-class missions to the outer-System moons -- ANY of them -- worthwhile again. |
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Mar 21 2006, 10:54 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
So perhaps what we should be focusing on right now is: are there any ingenious new ways to explore the moons of the outer satellites with New Frontiers-class missions? The traditional line has been that there aren't, but then this has been based on a confidence that Flagship-class missions WILL be flown to them. The loss of those makes a careful reexamination of ideas for NF-class missions to the outer-System moons -- ANY of them -- worthwhile again. Tight as money is, I'm not convinced that mission funding is not in that nonlinear zone that government specializes in, where it's not necessarily twice as hard to get money for something twice as expensive. So maybe the flagship/NF distinction is misleading. But I would certainly think that a free/cheap-return flyby sampler of Enceladus's plumes could be done in the NF budget. Would it be possible to do this with solar panels plus batteries and extensive use of "sleep" mode? Sampling Titan's upper atmosphere would seem to be possible, but less obviously desirable. Seems to me that any Enceladus-sniffing mission has to cross Titan's orbit twice anyway, so in principle, it's doable. In fact, given that you could have this craft lose velocity and still back to Earth, an aero-braking pass through Titan's atmosphere might even be the thing to make it work! This all seems possible, but screaming of super-tight engineering constraints. A double sample return on a budget would be a stunning success, and any remote sensing that rode along would be bonus. Note that this craft would also cross the orbit of most of Saturn's other satellites twice -- including Iapetus. Barring constraints with Iapetus's inclination and obvious geometric constraints, and the fact that Cassini might just finish the Iapetus saga... Imagine a one-shot mission that flies on the cheap, wakes up just to image Iapetus's most intriguing terrain that Cassini doesn't get around to (this could also happen on the out-leg), samples Titan's upper atmosphere, images the Tiger Stripes up-close while sampling Enceladus's plumes, and returning the two samples to Earth. The proponents of whatever mission this was competing with would have to get a little sweat on their foreheads. |
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