After Victoria..., .. what next? Options

[Stu]

I know we've had rather light-hearted discussions about this before, with most people agreeing that Oppy is likely to end her days inside or on the edge of Victoria Crater, simply because there's nothing else to investigate within reach, but has Steve S got it in his mind that Oppy will head off somewhere else after Victoria? This report could be read in a way that suggests that...

[Stu]

I think most people here know just how much I live and breathe this stuff, so they'll know how it sadens me to say that striking out for Ithaca would be very bold and noble, and in the 'spirit of exploration' but I think it would be pretty pointless. It hurts me to sound so defeatist, but I just can't see the point, it's a waste of systems and scientific opportunities. Going to Ithaca would mean a journey of - IO think we're all agreed - several years, and those years would be filled with day after day after yawning day of almost unchanging scenery... dunes stretching off to the horizon in an endless sea of ripples, each dune a potential Purgatory... a few rocks here and there, probably meteorites too... sol rise after sol set with nothing new of any note to see or examine... and every sol the chance of a wheel failing, or a system breaking, or a software problem occurring, would grow larger. And all the time the mountainous rim of Ithaca would stubbornly refuse to grow any bigger up ahead. Poor Oppy would be stuck in a Star Trek Voyager scenario... a looooooooong journey to get to anywhere, with death a constant threat, but without the gorgeous Borg in a sprayed-on uniform and the so-annoying-you-could-strangle-him alien cook.

Remember the UMSF journey south to Victoria? How we picked up on every hint of a feature on the horizon and obsessed about it for days and weeks? How Doug came close to hiring hitmen to shut some people up? Now, imagine that for FOUR YEARS as Oppy trudges south... arguments over a dozen different beacons... frustration over unchanging scenery after Oppy gets stuck in one dune after another... boredom setting in (and it would, come on, you know it would! I love Mars, but 4 years of dunes would be too much) with week after week of the same scenery...

No. Ithaca would be a great prize (actually, as I type that I'm not so sure about that: it's so big, it would dwarf Victoria, we could only ever hope to see a small portion of it up close, and the far rim would be so far away it would look just like very small mountains on the horizon... hardly a target rich zone for pretty pictures... and it looks so old and weathered that surely the rocks we could study have been eroded greatly... no, I'm not sure it is a great prize...) but there comes a point where someone, somewhere, will have to say "Okay, we've done all we can, but we've nowhere else to go. We plan a long observation mission here, where we are."