March OPAG presentations available Options

[vjkane]

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/march_08_meeting/agenda.html

LOTS of interesting material here. Some highlights that interested me:

Cassini extended-extended mission (XXM) could last 7 years and end with a series of very close (10,000's km) polar orbits through the D ring gap to enable close in gravity and magnetometer mapping a la Juno

Argo proposal would be a New Horizon's class fly by of a Trojan, Saturn, Neptune/Triton, and one or more KBOs for ~$800M (but requires radioactive power source, so would seem to be out of contention for next New Frontiers)

Joint Jupiter mission design. NASA supplied Europa orbiter now required to conduct Jupiter system science including up to 4 Io flybys. To fit within the $2.1B cap (with 33% margin), Europa orbit would be reduced to 60 days and several instruments from the Flagship proposal would be dropped including the narrow angle camera)

Titan mission. Aerocapture no longer allowed, so craft would enter Saturn orbit first. Potentially allows new Enceladus observations. (Editorial note: Presentation was long on concepts, short on specifics. If this is an indication of the maturity of the mission concept, this does not bode well. I hope that this is only the style of presentation chosen by the presenter). Nature of ESA in situ probe(s) to be decided.

ESA Cosmic Vision outer planet mission. ESA is considering three missions for the next cosmic vision mission: an outer planets joint mission with NASA (Jupiter or Titan/Saturn), XEUS (X-ray observatory), or LISA (gravity wave observatory). Down select to two of the three end of '09, final single mission selected in 2011.

Radioisotope power. Lots of technical update, but a gem in the backup, the ASRG (Sterling engine) mission concepts being studied in more detail than I've seen elsewhere:

Moon polar rover (2 concepts)
Titan boat(!)
Io observer
Trojan lander
Comet lander
Comet coma rendezvou sample return
Mars lander drill ("a tour through Martian history")
Venus balloons (2)

[djellison]

Unfortunately, it's very VERY hard to do international colab at any level other than the hard-cut offs ( i.e. Cassini / Hugyens ) or the instrument level ( although look at the Phoenix MET for how hard that's been). The transferring of pure cash is not a wise move in terms of public opinion.

Other than contributing whole spacecraft, or just instruments - I'm not sure what you're suggesting Stephen.

[Stephen]

Other than contributing whole spacecraft, or just instruments - I'm not sure what you're suggesting Stephen.

I think you're missing my point.

When I said in my previous post that the proposal ESO/JSO/JAXA project looked more like a group of national missions "bundled together for marketing purposes" that was partially based on this line in the Jovian project's preliminary proposal outlined at the recent OPAG meeting:

"Independent launches allow decoupled development schedules"

"[I]ndependent launches" obviously means separate launch vehicles for each orbiter--as opposed to both sharing one vehicle. Less obvious is that "decoupled development schedules" implies development programs for each orbiter that are to some degree independent of each other.

Having independent launches and "decoupled" development schedules would be just what you would expect if those orbiters were indeed separate projects only loosely tied together rather than one integral project with two elements integrated with one another to some degree (as for example was the case with Cassini-Huygens) or one project with twin elements (eg the MERs or the Voyagers).

They are also hardly going to help cut the overall cost of the project to make both more affordable to those who will be paying the bills. The Jovian proposal outlined in the recent presentation is not so much one flagship mission with two elements totalling $2+ billion as one flagship mission with two $2+ billion elements: a $2+ billion EO and a $2+ billion JSO! (And thus a grand total cost in excess of $4 billion.)

Can NASA and the ESA, even together, afford a $4+ billion mission to Jupiter?

I dunno, but judging from the tea leaves displayed--or rather not displayed--in the recent OPAG presentation someone may have doubts. That OPAG presentation was noticable for the absence of details on the JSO. It is not as if they don't exist. That presentation pulled the EO ones from the 2007 EO report. The fact that the presenters did not do the same for the JSO could be interpreted to mean that somewhere there is an argument still going on as to what kind of JSO the ESA will be funding.

Personally I wish both orbiters could fly. If that is not achievable then the next best option would be a fully funded EO or a fully funded JSO, with or without a smaller and less ambitious version of the other riding along with the main orbiter (a la Huygens with Cassini) which would be released when the two arrived in the Jovian system. One of the two could still be provided by NASA and the other by the ESA.

At the moment though that doesn't seem what the Jovian team has in mind.

Persevering with both multi-billion dollar craft but not enough funding for both is not likely to produce a happy ending. Either there will be no Jovian mission at all (because the Titan one will get picked instead) or a large funding hole will open up which someone will have to fill in, most likely with bits and pieces of the mission which could not be paid for, to the likely detriment of the mission as a whole. For example, if NASA can't even pay for the EO as it stands out of that $2.1 billion where will it be getting the funds from to pay for a substantial contribution to the JSO? Or will it be a case of NASA saying to the ESA you guys put a $10 million instrument on our orbiter and we'll put a $10 million instrument on yours?
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Stephen

[Mariner9]

They are also hardly going to help cut the overall cost of the project to make both more affordable to those who will be paying the bills. The Jovian proposal outlined in the recent presentation is not so much one flagship mission with two elements totalling $2+ billion as one flagship mission with two $2+ billion elements: a $2+ billion EO and a $2+ billion JSO! (And thus a grand total cost in excess of $4 billion.)

Can NASA and the ESA, even together, afford a $4+ billion mission to Jupiter?

Stephen

While I agree with many of the points you have made, I strongly doubt that the Jupiter orbiter that the ESA contributes would come anywhere close to 2 billion dollars. You keep basing your numbers on the JSO study that NASA did. There is no reason to assume that ESA would be bound to that study's basic assumptions or conclusions at all.

I was astounded when I read the JSO and the Europa Orbiter Flagship studies. The engineers put just about every instrument known to man on those craft, about the only thing those ships were missing were gold plated kitchen sinks. In fairness to the studies' authors, NASA ground rules were to design a flagship mission with a soft budget cap of 3 billion dollars. As a result, all the studies came back at around 3 billion (mostly on the plus side as I recall). But while the Titan flagship mission actually had reasonable downscope options putting the costs down to 2 billion for the Titan Orbiter, the JSO and Europa studies really didn't. Those ships were big, and expensive.

So, right off the bat I would point out that the JSO that NASA came up with is a very big cumbersome beast, and I think ESA is very unlikely to even contemplate trying to match it.

Other considerations are that ESA would likely be using Solar power, which is as I understand it somewhat cheaper than RTGs. Another thing to note is that JSO was supposed to be a solo mission, trying to accomplish every possible study it could for the entire Jovian system. However, with the Europa Orbiter being flown by NASA, the ESA JSO can fly a somewhat reduced number of instruments, and smaller optics (I had the impression that the hi-res imaging system on the JSO was going to be rather large).

So for the ESA mission we are talking about a smaller vehicle, fewer instruments, and a cheaper power supply. It will be tough to manage the 1 billion dollar cost cap they are shooting for, but considering that the instrument cost is not factored into their budget, they can very possibly manage it.