Pioneering NASA Spacecraft Mark 30 Years of Flight Options

[jmjawors]

-Link-

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-092

[ugordan]

Is there a reference for the booster underperformance? Didn't Voyager 1 actually put a higher demand on the launch vehicle as it was launched on a faster trajectory?
This quote also seems inaccurate to me:

Voyager 1's launch took place 16 days later, on September 5th, when the planetary alignment was better for reaching Jupiter and Saturn — but by which time the Uranus-Neptune trajectory "window" had closed.

Is it not the case of Vgr 1 not being able to reach Uranus and Neptune solely because the Titan flyby would severely bend the trajectory out of the ecliptic, making any further planetary encounters impossible? In case of Voyager 1's failure, 2 would have been retargetted to Titan and would also have lost Uranus and Neptune.

[tedstryk]

Is it not the case of Vgr 1 not being able to reach Uranus and Neptune solely because the Titan flyby would severely bend the trajectory out of the ecliptic, making any further planetary encounters impossible? In case of Voyager 1's failure, 2 would have been retargetted to Titan and would also have lost Uranus and Neptune.

Yes. Also, there were some funding battles (Voyager 2 nearly got turned off before Uranus).