Odyssey and MER Budgets Cut Options

[Ryan]

Just found out today at a MER all-hands meeting that both MER and Odyssey will each be suffering an immediate $4 million budget cut to help defray the cost of MSL. Read more here: http://martianchronicles.wordpress.com/200...rs-budget-cuts/

[djellison]

Having done that - here's my thoughts.

Funding a Mars 'program' is , I think, not quite fair. The case in point is clear here. MSL has had budget issues. Now - to be fair, so did MER, but that's spent cash now. Why should the current budget growth of MSL reflect as a punishment on Odyssey and MER? I know 'life isn't fair' - but Odyssey and MER are big success stories, with more to come and the budget problems of another mission shouldn't impact that.

However, missions HAVE to be accountable. But, you can't exactly scrap a $1B mission when I'd imagine most (more than half I'd guess) of the cash is already spent. But neither can it spend without implications. And I just don't think it's fair to steal from the pockets of other missions currently flying. The only way I can see it really working is if there is an overrun- you then have to look at future missions, and rescope / descope / delay / cancel them. To look sideways and cull from current missions just doesn't seem right, and nor is it fair to clump together multiple missions ( i.e. Mars program, discovery program ) and punish others from that 'clump' for the errors on a different mission. Funding for extensions is hard. I've spoken to David Southwood in person about the struggle to fund new missions at ESA when MEX, VEX, XMM-Newton, integral, Cluster etc etc are all needing extended mission funds. And while new is always good, it's also criminal to cull an active, scientifically productive mission where all the risk is just about sunk and you KNOW what your extra money will get.

As for the argument of how much to spend on certain fields of interest - I think there's a certain level of bigger picture to be had there. Currently we can do 30cm/pixel, 4 Mbits orbiters at Mars, and (hopefully) 20km+ rovers with movie cameras and amazing laboratories. Part of me thinks that actually, whilst it's always true to say that the technology will be better tomorrow (like buying a new laptop for example) - targets such as Neptune and Uranus could do with a decade or two further development so that when we return there, we do so knowing it'll probably be the only trip for half a century, and it better be damn good as a result.

But whilst it would be nice to have a 'scheme' on how to fund, who to fund and when - such a system is basically the net result of scientific taste. Who's to say that the scientific calling of one body get's an 'A' over another body getting a 'B'. Guess what, the scientists with an interest in each will say each is the most important. And how much does our technically ability to investigate those sites play a role. I prefer TE over the other flagship missions. Why? Because I like Titan. That's just about it. Does it offer better science than the others? No. It's different science - and I don't think it's even possible to say what better is. It probably offers MORE science though. But then, we don't KNOW what the science if going to be. So, do we do the easiest mission? No - because half (imho) the benefit of these missions is the engineering progress they make - and a mission should be considered good for having engineering challenges that are good challenges, but manageable challenges (MPF for example).

Trying to manage all that, well, it'd be enough to make you quit your job.

Oops.


Doug