Is Europa really the "highest priority" of the community?, Cleave said it was at LPSC? Options

[mcaplinger]

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.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

The very good March 17 "Science" article on space science's financial quandary ( http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/science_cuts.pdf ) says that the LISA space gravity mission will now have to face off against NASA's other big astrophysical cosmological missions for funding -- there simply is not enough to fund two or more of them simultaneously:

"Rising costs and flat budgets also will force NASA to compete several new astrophysics flights. Constellation X—a group of four orbiting telescopes that will image the x-ray universe— will face off against the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, designed to detect gravitational waves, and a Joint Dark Energy Mission with the Energy Department. The winner will get a green light to start work in earnest in 2009 or 2010 for a launch later in the next decade. The other two will have to wait their turn."

Also note: "The Space Interferometry Mission, another planet-hunting mission, won’t be orbited until 2015 or 2016, and its cost has grown to $4 billion." Jeez. This definitely supports Fran Bagenal's statement ( http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/07_budget_bagenal.pdf ) that it's inaccurate to say that space science's only problem is that growing Shuttle/Station expenses are bleeding off its funds (although that's obviously part of it): "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 "Gravity Waves' " wish list has no chance of being funded in toto -- or close to it -- and an excellent case can be made that it SHOULDN'T be. To twist Bette Davis a bit: Let's not ask for the Moon when we don't even have the stars yet.