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Posted by: Ryan Mar 24 2008, 09:11 PM

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/2008/03/24/mars-budget-cuts/

Posted by: brellis Mar 24 2008, 09:57 PM

Sorry to hear about it. There was at one point a proposal for "targeted tax cuts". I wish we could make "targeted tax payments". All my "discretionary" taxes would be dedicated to the space program!

Posted by: djellison Mar 24 2008, 11:07 PM

I'm writing emails to people to see what, if anything, can be done from a public voice perspective.

Not like this. Please not like this.

Posted by: nprev Mar 24 2008, 11:28 PM

I'm sure Emily's aware; hopefully, TPS will come out swinging.

What kills me is that this is about a lousy $8 million; that is CHUMP CHANGE in terms of government spending!!! However, half of it also represents more than a third of the MERs' remaining operating budget this year, which is devastating.

Somebody's not thinking this through, IMHO.

Posted by: Stu Mar 24 2008, 11:52 PM

Just got in from work to find this news. Unbelievable.

Obviously it's tempting for everyone to come out guns blazing right now, and fire outraged emails off in all directions, but clearly we'll have a louder voice if we work together and work to a plan, too. We need to know exactly who to write to to protest about this, and to get as many people onboard as possible, right across the online space community. I'm sure TPS and UMSF, plus Phil over at Bad Astronomy, plus Universe Today, Space.com and various other websites could have a very loud voice indeed if we all worked together.

Posted by: djellison Mar 24 2008, 11:57 PM

Yup - I'd ask people to hang tight from the ranting and letter writing until we know exactly what, if anything, the public voice can do. Once we know, then we do whatever we can. But until we know what the best action is, it's best to wait.

Update : The official word is, hold tight for the next few days.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Mar 25 2008, 12:16 AM

Stu is correct. In my job I am often on the receiving end of similar outraged letters and emails. Informed, intelligent and coordinated is a very powerful way to do this. Lashing out and hurling invective is incredibly counterproductive. So lets cool off, and I'd say watch Emily's column, I'm guessing TPS will get the best information the soonest.

Posted by: nprev Mar 25 2008, 12:59 AM

Agreed. There are a lot of systemic factors to consider, and apologies for my initial outrage (I sent no nastygrams, though.) Main thing as I see it is that we don't know the budget wickets that have to be run through.

NASA is stand-alone, unlike most other Federal agencies that are part of huge departments, which with correspondingly large budgets have a lot more flexibility in rerouting funding. Eight million clams ain't much in the grand scheme of things, here. I'm--very--cautiously optimistic that there are some untapped means to ameliorate this.

Posted by: brellis Mar 25 2008, 01:12 AM

hmm, maybe a sponsor can come to the rescue, but does anyone really want to see Spirit renamed "The Google Rover"?

Posted by: Stu Mar 25 2008, 01:27 AM

Hey, absolutely no need to apologise for that! We're all gnawing on our knuckles here, I'm sure! But the main thing is to take a deep breath and figure out how to challenge this, seriously and through the proper channels, so we don't come across as a bunch of angry internet space geeks who are p****d that their hi-tech toys are being taken away from them. Once we identify the right people to target, and agree on a common message, that will allow us to make a solid, practical and economic case for keeping the rovers funded, then we can gather allies around us and move forward.

There may come a day when the rovers have to be abandoned. There may come a day when it simply makes no sense to keep throwing money at them. There may come a day when we have to accept that they've nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, and should go to sleep.

But today is not that day.

Posted by: nprev Mar 25 2008, 01:46 AM

Thanks for the words of encouragement, O Poet Laureate! Certainly in this community sanity and unity will prevail; I do cringe a bit at the thought of what others might be doing even as we speak, though...

Brellis, I hear ya; that's actually not the option I had in mind (but, gotta tell ya, at this point wouldn't mind seeing the MERs and Odyssey sponsored by Google, though never renamed. Hell, $8M is like the price of sixteen Super Bowl ads, maybe less!) What I was thinking of was finding other Federal funding that could be reapportioned.

Again, NASA's in a bit of a spot for this sort of thing because it's administratively not affiliated with any other agencies with lateral disbursing authority for operations & maintenance funding (AKA 3400 money), AFAIK. Still, it seems that some sort of arrangement should be possible, and I sure hope that any such options are being thoroughly explored.

Posted by: brellis Mar 25 2008, 02:15 AM

A while back I wondered if due to budget constraints, operators would be inclined to attempt ever more suicidal stunts with their maneuvers, knowing that there would be no funding for further operations. How dangerous is hibernation? At what point would it be worth it purely for budgetary reasons to test the navigational limits of Spirit's abilities, as opposed to putting the baby to sleep and risking further budget cuts?

However this plays out, it is a great measure of success for the MER missions that the rovers have survived so far beyond expectations.

Posted by: nprev Mar 25 2008, 02:25 AM

Truer words were never spoken. Gotta quote Doug as well, though: "Not like this. Please not like this."

...till they fall off!!!!!!!

Posted by: merman Mar 25 2008, 02:26 AM

Hi all,

It is important for everyone to realize that these budget cuts are not set in stone, not yet. The budget will be cut, yes, but it may not be by a full $4 million over the next 6 months. Steve and others in the MER team are working to soften the blow; part of this will include approaching Congress for some extra money. This is where you, and the public in general, can help.

Write to members of Congress. Particularly, write to members of the Science and Technology Committees as well as the Appropriations Committees, for both the House and Senate. Some of the members of these committees may in fact be your elected members of Congress; all the better. For a list of who is on the committees (and subcommittees), take a look at the following sites;

House Appropriations Committee
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newcommittee.cgi?site=ctc&lang=&commcode=happrop

Senate Appropriations Committee
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newcommittee.cgi?site=ctc&lang=&commcode=sapprop

Senate Commerce, Science, and Technology Committee
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newcommittee.cgi?site=ctc&lang=&commcode=scommerce

House Science and Technology Committee
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newcommittee.cgi?site=ctc&lang=&commcode=hscience

The letters don't have to be long, detailed, or technical. What's important is that they refer to the MER project, the budget cuts, and your support of the project and it's continued funding. Also, written letters arriving by mail have the most clout, with a fax coming in second. If you are a constituent writing your representative a letter, it means a lot.

Above all else, though, please be polite and positive in the letter. Don't rant and rave, put down other missions or projects, lay any blame, or deride individuals. This is very much a place where you'll catch more flies with honey.

Thanks to everyone for all of your support.

Posted by: mcaplinger Mar 25 2008, 02:39 AM

At the risk of being virtually pilloried by this crowd, would you prefer that they killed a rover through
miscommanding, like VL1 or MGS?

This is a pretty obvious "Washington Monument" ploy, not worth being that upset about yet. That said, does anyone think much more good science is going to be coming out of Spirit?

Posted by: Astro0 Mar 25 2008, 02:44 AM

This has hit the wider media already...
http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/24/budget-woes-at-nasa-to-impact-mars-rovers/
http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/24/mars-rover-reprieve/
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/03/24/nasa.mars.rover/index.html


Astro0

Posted by: Aussie Mar 25 2008, 03:02 AM

I am not sure that outrage is warranted. My understanding is that despite requesting a budgetary increase overall, the NASA budget request for Mars for the period of 2009-2012 was around $340m, well down from the $620m in last years forward estimates. So the reduction in MER funding is not a Government imposed restriction, but rather is exactly what NASA requested. So now NASA has to work within this self imposed budget. I am not sure what other Mars programs should be diluted to keep the MER funding up to the required level. Nor does it seem smart to call for diversion of funds from other programs. After all in only a few years the shuttle will be retired and the US will lose the capability to launch people into space until Ares 1 comes on line.

Sigh. Perhaps the end run for Von Braun was the way to go for Spirit.

Posted by: Greg Hullender Mar 25 2008, 03:40 AM

Well, I wrote my congressman, BUT it already looks like both rovers are safe. So I suggested he introduce a resolution celebrating the Rover's accomplishments and commending the Rover team for promptly sharing their data with the public. Heck, I think that's WAY overdue.

--Greg

Posted by: nprev Mar 25 2008, 03:48 AM

Huh? Greg, could you please expound on that a bit? Any info you can share here would ease a lot of minds.

Posted by: mchan Mar 25 2008, 04:00 AM

Click on Astro's link to CNN above.

Posted by: nprev Mar 25 2008, 04:06 AM

Ah...thanks, mchan.

"Mixed signals"...yeah, I'd say so. Hopeful, apparently...I guess...I suppose...argh?!?! "Confusing" is another way to put it.

Can't tell where the nuts and bolts of the situation end and the spin control begins.

Posted by: laurele Mar 25 2008, 04:12 AM

The rovers in so many ways represent the best of what the US has to offer--leadership in exploration, willingness to take risks in exploring new frontiers for the sake of knowledge, an incentive for young people and those of all ages to once again become excited about the space program. It would be a crying shame to end a program that has been so successful and so inspirational in a day and age when cynicism too often trumps idealism.

If developments call for these cuts to go forward, there should be an organized effort to get them reversed, through letters from people on sites like this as well as astronomy clubs, schools, etc. It's just my opinion, but some members of Congress may not be that familiar with the rovers' mission and history and may be willing to take a second look at reinstating the funding once they are familiarized with their amazing accomplishments.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Mar 25 2008, 04:18 AM

Yes.

Posted by: JRehling Mar 25 2008, 04:20 AM

There's definitely a spectrum along which missions fall according to how much more science a working craft can provide once it's done the once-over. Magellan obviously could have provided SOME science from additional radar mapping, but it was also obviously a diminishing return. Or a hail mary effort to dubious ends (like looking for mass movement).

In principle, Spirit could do a number of things, over an arbitrarily long period of time, for scientific gain. We don't know how much more distance it can traverse without failing. It could perhaps do some things outside the expected, like survey thoroughly for meteorites, or set off on a quixotic drive towards some [very] far-off landmark on the off chance that it would survive the trek. Perhaps even a return to Bonneville on the off-chance that some layering exists that couldn't be seen from the perspectives gained early in the mission.

This is, of course, all in the diminishing returns department. It's hard to say how much the science/dollar is, but then, that's hard to say with a newly minted mission as well.

Posted by: mcaplinger Mar 25 2008, 05:05 AM

I would argue that Odyssey is far more likely to yield more good science than either of the rovers, which will be lucky to go a few more km and which have pretty much already exhausted the capabilities of their payloads to find anything more out about the landing sites (barring some unpredictable serendipitous discovery.)

But, as usual, the orbiter missions are "boring" and the rovers aren't. Though this budget business is the only rover news I can remember getting any media attention for quite a while (years?)

Posted by: slinted Mar 25 2008, 05:11 AM

Since the story came out today, I've been thinking about which activities Spirit would lose by going into hibernation now. Here's a short list of what would be lost from Pancam alone:

Tau profiles: Both rovers have a very data-dense profile going back 1500 sols with new values being recorded nearly every sol. Hibernating until October would mean losing ~200 sols worth of data, and by doing so Spirit may miss the first signs of dust activity coming out of winter (depending on when in October they wake Spirit back up).

Full-filter 360 stereo panorama: The http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_instrument/mcmurdo_v2.html, taken last winter by Spirit, was THE most detailed/lossless imaging campaign from a single location for either rover. This year's Bonestell panorama would be similar and has already begun, but we'll lose that if Spirit goes into hibernation now.

Long term monitoring: Including the El Dorado monitoring campaign (which showed some http://www.lyle.org/~markoff/el_dorado/el_dorado_streaks.gif last winter) and some of the horizon/sky sequences

I'm missing many other possible activities, but even on the strength of these scientific opportunities alone, they should find $4 million dollars to keep a great project alive.

Posted by: elakdawalla Mar 25 2008, 05:14 AM

Here's a question I don't know the answer to: Say Spirit can no longer rove, but has enough power to continue some observations, in particular observations of weather phenomena like sky opacity and stuff like that. How valuable is it for the understanding of Mars' weather to have one continuous set of measurements from one point on the ground indefinitely? Spirit's not a real "weather station" -- it can't measure wind speed or direction or other properties of the air, at least not directly; but it can continue to gather records relevant to weather. Is having that one limited set of records from that one point worth spending a few to 10 million dollars over the course of a year? Or is the type of data that Spirit can gather so limited that gathering another year or two's worth wouldn't provide much further incremental benefit to Mars climatologists?

Mike, since you're the representative of the orbital community in this discussion, can you comment on what continuing science campaigns are being performed by Odyssey? I don't know much more to say about specifically why Odyssey needs to continue other than "More data good. No more data bad." And I'm sure there are much more intelligent things that can be said than that.

--Emily

Posted by: JRehling Mar 25 2008, 05:49 AM

In what is serendipitous timing, a piece on Odyssey science, after appearing in this week's Science, just broke in the big-time press (eg, New York Times).

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/319/5870/1651

Posted by: edstrick Mar 25 2008, 06:25 AM

"... Magellan obviously could have provided SOME science from additional radar mapping,..."

False.

Magellan's radar had FAILED. An electronics problem that changed from occassional-intermittent to constant (as I recall) wiped out Magellan's ability to do imaging. (It put the radar equivalent of a microphone-feedback-squeel in the transmitter or receiver or something). Magellan had aerobraked (in an engineering demonstration that paved the way for all subsequent Mars orbiters) into a low near-circular orbit and raised periapsis. From that orbit, radio tracking of the spacecraft provided a pole-to-pole uniform quality gravity anomaly map not possible from it's original orbit. The spacecraft was finally de-orbited in a series aerobraking dynamics tests as it's solar panels were failing and the spacecraft was about to go "power negative", due to solder joint failing in the solar panels caused by 8 venus years of thermal cycling, sped-up in the low circular orbit.

Posted by: edstrick Mar 25 2008, 06:31 AM

"...Spirit's not a real "weather station" -- it can't measure wind speed or direction or other properties of the air, at least not directly; but it can continue to gather records relevant to weather...."

What is the status of the MiniTES?... I thought that was essentially inoperative (unable to return useful science) on both landers due to dust contamination. But, I've seen that it's doing some routine observations on Spirit.

The rovers can (with MiniTES, if it's working) get thermal profiles of the lower atmosphere and see convective turbulence due to daytime heating, etc. They can also monitor atmospheric opacity, sky color and brightness, and clouds. The problem is how much this is worth compared with other science. There ought to be Viking-2 Winter and Viking-1 "Eternal Mission" type modes of repetitive cycle, fully automatic operation: Collect data for a week, dump it in a single communications session, whether anybody's listening or not. Should be.....

Slinted's comments and list of suggestions a few posts back are very much the sort of thing that can be automated. VL-1 did that sort of thing, a few targets re-imaged at intervals, a s....l....o....w....l....y built up panorama, etc. (note that the viking landers were extremely data volume limited on a direct link to Earth, much as the Rovers are now.

Posted by: Stu Mar 25 2008, 08:25 AM

Actually, let's not be so quick to dismiss any offers like that. Is there anyone here who would object to Spirit or Opportunity being part-sponsored by Google or some other company if it meant their mission continued? Would it be such a bad thing? This might have to be the way things are in this cash-strapped future. Here's an idea, and a semi-serious suggestion: let Google put a Google logo on MSL, close to the calibration dial - or make the Google logo part of the calibration dial - if that kind of advertising would bring in a contribution that would allow the MERs to work on.

Looking at this practically, the money we're talking about here is very small change to today's business community, and sports community too. Here in the UK football players are "bought" and "sold" for tens of millions of pounds and a lot, lot more. Here and across the world, I'm sure, business people spend fortunes on extravagances, and $4m would be what we call "back of the sofa" money to them. Business people have already spent millions of pounds going into space as space tourists. The money is out there for this, if it comes down to sponsorship of some kind, I'm sure it is. The question is, what would such a sponsor get back in return?

Worth thinking about, I believe.

Posted by: Stu Mar 25 2008, 08:32 AM

Our support is guaranteed and no less than you deserve.

Question: what kind of impact would letters arriving from MER supporters from the UK have on these Powers That Be? Excuse me for trotting out cliches here, but if we stressed things like the MERs' "contribution to the global scientific community", "value for the US's image", "proof of the superiority of US technology to overseas competitors", etc would that make a difference? I would personally be writing a letter including those points, and stressing too the value of MERs for public scientific Outreach, encouraging kids - around the globe, not just in the US - to take up careers in science and technology, etc etc, IF a letter arriving from overseas would help the campaign.

I think this is an important point because any such campaign would feature members of UMSF, TPS and other international communities, and a lot of people will be wanting to write letters of support.

Posted by: djellison Mar 25 2008, 08:51 AM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6909656.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6970561.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6990813.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7137793.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7205004.stm

And of course, from Odyssey
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7205004.stm

That's the last 12 months from the BBC.

There is good science yet to come from Home Plate and the southern basin. It was a short Martian summer for Spirit. But just before that dust storm, Spirit had hit 800 Whrs and was ready to head south. The dust storm took away that chance, but, given the fact that it survived that storm, I think that it will survive this winter and can carry on to the features south of Home Plate. If it gets the chance.

From what I've heard - this is a waiting game anyway. There's likely to be some creative accounting and juggling over the next few days. Let's see where this actually ends up by the end of the week.

The thing to NOT do is lash out at one program or one mission. That doesn't get anyone anywhere.

Doug

Posted by: tedstryk Mar 25 2008, 09:50 AM

The seemingly odd NASA response about not being willing to shut a rover down, given the inevitability of such a thing should these cuts stand, makes me really think that this was part of this NASA vs. the Mars program battle and possibly a bluff, and Squires and the media who are publicizing this may have just called them on it.

Posted by: ustrax Mar 25 2008, 11:36 AM

So one goes out for the Easter and when one returns this is the scenary?
No one messes with our babies...

Posted by: PhilCo126 Mar 25 2008, 11:58 AM

Indeed lots of media intrest: NASA budget cut threatens MER duties!
I would hate to see the Mars Exploration Rovers' budget running out before the rovers do... But what if?

Although NASA Administrator Michael Griffin might be against a shutdown, if they'll have to make a choice I guess Spirit would become the victim as it has been doing a lot of five wheel driving (after problems with the right front wheel since March 2006). Moreover, Opportunity is in a far more interesting place

Cost per year to run the Mars twins is $20 million per year.

Posted by: Adam Mar 25 2008, 12:22 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080324/ap_on_sc/mars_rovers;_ylt=AjirvfT0cEHmK5kyVt51AUGs0NUE

Looks like bad news?

Posted by: nprev Mar 25 2008, 12:26 PM

The Odyssey cuts are equally nonsensical. Given the long lead time, big money and assumed risk required just to get an interplanetary spacecraft where it needs to be, it makes absolutely no sense to me to shut one down or intentionally limit its operations unless the vehicle's capabilities are severely impaired. Annual operating costs are trivial compared to the level of effort & expenditure needed to get them there in the first place.

I find it appalling that Odyssey & the MERs are apparently suffering for their superb reliability and longevity. Sure, these days we can always build something better after the fact, but the transportation lag and inherent risks of getting there at all (as well as the capricious nature of developmental efforts/funding) sure as hell reinforces the old chestnut about a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush.

Moreover, if shutdowns of operational spacecraft becomes an acceptable practice, what sort of message are we sending to the contractors that build them? "Make it work for *** days...no more?" That's a slippery slope; planned obsolescence has no place at all in UMSF. Likewise, project team members probably would not find the prospect of abitrarily limited term employment appealing enough to stay on...it's gotta be brutal anyhow hoping that their babies stay alive as long as it takes to pay the bills & find another project willing to take you on after this one's done. Disregarding human factors in this system is extremely perilous.

Posted by: climber Mar 25 2008, 01:49 PM

I'd thought that Nasa (or whoever it is) would have been wise to avoid this debate so close to a Mars landing.
I'm not sure the people that are working so hard to make Phoenix lander a success are in their best mood now.
Communicating is essential but sometimes, they'd better think it twice.
I hope Spirit & Oppy will not be only two successful landing from 2004 to 2014.

Posted by: ustrax Mar 25 2008, 02:04 PM

Guys, just got the info that it seems like the situation is evolving quite rapidly...
There was also a request to give it a day waiting for something new.
Let us prepare ourselves...

Posted by: Greg Hullender Mar 25 2008, 03:09 PM

I'd think your best bet would be to write to your MP and suggest he/she send some sort of supportive memo to NASA or Congress. Be sure to supply suggested wording. I got my Congressman to write a letter to NASA supportiing the Kepler mission (a long time ago), and his staff were even kind enough to let me know when the mission got approved.

It's hard to gauge how much impact personal letters from overseas would have, but I wouldn't think it'd be much -- unless there were a whole lot of them. A letter from an MP, though -- especially a 100% positive letter along the lines you suggest (to the effect that this sort of thing does wonders for America's image abroad) should be a completely different matter.

--Greg

Posted by: mcaplinger Mar 25 2008, 04:15 PM

I'm the representative of the orbital community? Then why am I working so hard on MSL?

Seriously, as others have said it's pretty hard to put a dollar figure on data bits. Certainly more GRS integration time leads to better SNR and higher spatial resolution in elemental abundance maps, and more THEMIS images is more coverage of more places in more bands. And THEMIS can monitor atmospheric temperature and dust globally. But there's some overlap with the MRO payload in that regard, so I would think the GRS dataset was the unique contribution of Odyssey.

Posted by: elakdawalla Mar 25 2008, 05:02 PM

"in this discussion," Mike, "in this discussion." Most people hanging out on UMSF are more than a little emotionally connected to the MERs and have less situational awareness of what's going on with the orbiters -- I figured, since you'd spoken up on Odyssey's behalf, you'd have more to say about what it's currently doing. I've been wondering about the value of long-term THEMIS atmospheric monitoring. Obviously MRO has MCS to do weather monitoring, but the MCS guys haven't yet delivered higher-level data products, and I'll bet having the THEMIS data set overlapping with them will help a lot -- especially since the elevation actuator problem on MCS has severely limited their ability to do nadir-pointing measurements.

To show you how much I (don't) know, I was under the mistaken impression that GRS was no longer taking data. That's one case where "more data good" is a pretty clear-cut benefit, for the reasons you mention.

--Emily

Posted by: mcaplinger Mar 25 2008, 05:11 PM

That message is explicitly stated as a requirement in every RFP for every spacecraft I've ever worked on, except it's usually 3x longer than the expected mission duration.

I've worked on spacecraft that blew up, were misnavigated into a planet, crashed, and were miscommanded into oblivion (and even a few that worked.) After all that, I'm skeptical that an explicit shutdown for cost-saving reasons would have much of a chilling effect.

Posted by: mcaplinger Mar 25 2008, 05:12 PM

Don't get me wrong, it may not be. I'm only involved with Odyssey to the extent that I get consulted when there's a hiccup with the THEMIS hardware, which hasn't happened for a while now.

EDIT: GRS is still releasing products to the PDS (last was in Jan 08). Could you be thinking of MARIE, which has been shut down for a while now?

Posted by: elakdawalla Mar 25 2008, 05:39 PM

Posted by: Of counsel Mar 25 2008, 05:44 PM

Breaking news?

NASA: Mars rovers won't be cut
1 hour, 19 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES - NASA says it has absolutely no plan to turn off either of the Mars Rovers because of budget cuts. NASA is saying Tuesday that it has rescinded a letter that recommended budget cuts in the Mars Rover program to cover the cost of a next-generation rover on the Red Planet....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080325/ap_on_sc/mars_rovers;_ylt=AshN6lyyChB_QHKf8Jxo8IZxieAA
No news source cited. Please excuse me if this was already posted--I haven't seen it yet.

Posted by: bmerrow Mar 25 2008, 06:00 PM

The directive was rescinded an hour ago - there will be no shutdown of either Rover. Last weeks letter was removed from the table.
See http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080325/ap_on_sc/mars_rovers;_ylt=A0WTcWBxQOlHz0gApw_737YB

Posted by: imipak Mar 25 2008, 06:11 PM

My first thought was: w00t! Thank goodness it seems to have been a trial balloon. But a second, guilty thought occurs... presumably this means $8m in additional cost-saving now needs to be found elsewhere.

Any news on Odyssey?

(Two thoughts in one day? I'm going for a lie down.)

Posted by: JRehling Mar 25 2008, 06:12 PM

If you go to Google news and search for "Mars rover" you get 265 hits as a result of this cancellation/noncancellation.

If you look at the same thing a month ago, you see a trickle, most of which were extremely peripheral in so far as the Mars rovers actually being the topic.

Mission accomplished. Mars exploration and space exploration is in the news, and the tightness of their funding is the headline. That's the sound that this gunfire was intended to create. There was no actual target for the bullet.

Posted by: PaulM Mar 25 2008, 06:18 PM

I read an interview with Steve Squyres (it might have been one of Doug's interviews) in which Steve was asked if a stationary rover would continue to be funded. From what I remember what Steve said was that there would be no problem funding the management of a stationary rover. What could be done is that the number of rover teams could be reduced from two to one and the stationary rover could be managed as a part time activity by the one remaining rover team. What Steve said however was that if both rovers were stationary then it might be difficult to find the money given the limited scientific return from two stationary rovers.

I think that Spirit will be unlikely to do more than 2 days serious science each week for the next year. The remaining 5 days will have to be dedicated to recharging the Solar cells. It seems reasonable to me that the Oppy rover team manage Spirit as a part time job?

I wondered if some of the routine scientific analysis of Spirit and Oppy data could be out-sourced to India or China? I suspect that India might be prepared to generate calibrated colour panoramas for little more than the cost of the donation of computers and software required to do the work.

I wonder if ESA could also be persuaded to help out as practice for operating the Exomars rover?

I would also like to know what the maximum possible life expectancy of Phoenix is? I think that I read that Phoenix can not last more than 5 months because after that the Sun will be too low in the sky at mid-day to generate enough power to do science. I would rather Phoenix be stoped by the Sun than by a budget cut.

Posted by: JRehling Mar 25 2008, 06:23 PM

Phoenix will eventually be encased with seasonal polar CO2 ices, so it has a definite death day lurking when that takes place. But let's not bury the living just yet!

Posted by: PhilCo126 Mar 25 2008, 06:44 PM

http://www.physorg.com/news125666692.html

Posted by: brellis Mar 25 2008, 07:02 PM

Edit: just read your link, Phil - what a relief!

Regarding sponsorship, why shouldn't Google take up the slack on keeping mapping data flowing? "Google Mars" to the rescue!

Posted by: Astro0 Mar 26 2008, 01:05 AM

This reprieve is good news, but let's keep a vigilant eye on matters in case they try it again.
This year's $4m cut is 'off the table', but are we sure about next year's proposed $9m chop?

And...what about Odyssey? Demoted from a science mission to a comms relay?
I'm hoping to get a direct answer to that question soon.

Astro0

Posted by: vjkane Mar 26 2008, 02:26 AM

The money restored to MER and Odyssey will have to come out of something else. My fear is that it will come out of the science analysis budgets. So we'll have data that never gets analyzed.

Posted by: MahFL Mar 26 2008, 12:14 PM

Good news. Always a stupid idea turning off working spacecraft.

Posted by: tedstryk Mar 26 2008, 01:04 PM

As was pointed out earlier, the kind of money we are talking about may well be found in discretionary funds somewhere.

Posted by: Stu Mar 26 2008, 01:18 PM

Not wanting to kick a gift horse in the mouth and then run away with its hay, and maybe I watched too many conspiracy-filled X-Files episodes, but as brilliant as this news is, and thank you whoever tore that letter up... this reprieve sounds a bit quick and easy, doesn't it? So what was the point of all that? Was it The Powers That Be firing a "We're keeping an eye on your spending" warning shot across the bows of the Mars exploration community? A hand-slap for the MSL people, letting them know that other projects and programs might suffer if they don't get a handle on spending? A water-testing exercise to see what public reaction there'd be to possibly shutting down a rover? A similar test of reaction within the scientific community? A way of seeing if there would be any interest or approaches from private companies or individuals interested in funding/sponsoring space exploration?

Looking at the bigger picture, was this a subtle sign that perhaps, just perhaps, NASA is losing faith in the possibility of finding life - or even just evidence of past life - on Mars until they can afford a sample return mission, and this focus on the Outer Worlds is a shift towards conducting outer solar system exo-biology, on what many think are more promising candidates for life such as Europa, Titan and Enceladus..?

Discuss.

Posted by: tedstryk Mar 26 2008, 01:44 PM

Like I have said, at the LPSC, there was a great tension between the Griffin/Stern camp and the Mars camp, and the fact that on Griffin was furious over what he claimed was the Mars program's feeling of "entitlement" to the next flagship after MSL and a mission every two years. Griffin kept emphasizing that it could be worse - he is only talking about bringing Mars funding back to its average over the past 25 years, not zeroing it out like lunar exploration post-Apollo. He seemed genuinely angered by the lack of willingness of the Mars community to accept this (and, for the record, I am just reporting observations here, not my own opinion). I think this suddenly called meeting was a tactic, possibly to warn the Mars team that things could get much worse, so they had better quit complaining. Also, it may have been a tactic, assuming the planned to carry this out, to punish the Mars community for their "entitlement" attitude. On the scale of MSL, the amount of money in question seems suspiciously small for budgetary factors to be the real motivator.

What Griffin (and possibly Stern - it is difficult for me to tell what he thinks vs his serving as Griffin's messenger) didn't count on was that this would hit the press so quickly. The quick reversal leads me to think that the purpose was to scare the Mars community enough to make the post-MSL cutbacks not seem so bad. I think this was a bluff intended as a a scare tactic, and that they never intended to actually shut down a rover or Odyssey science. However, when, thanks to the story hitting the press in such a big and negative way, it backfired, the powers that be no doubt realized that they had better bail or end up with major egg on their face.

Posted by: merman Mar 26 2008, 02:22 PM

Thank you, everyone, for your support and help with this.

I don't think we'll know much solid wrt the '09 budget for several more months, since there will be ongoing discussions and jockeying through to October, probably.

I haven't heard any news on Odyssey.

Again, thank you all.

Posted by: elakdawalla Mar 26 2008, 03:45 PM

My understanding from some Odyssey folks is that the letter to JPL that directed the cuts both to Odyssey and to MER has been rescinded; so this should represent a reprieve for Odyssey as well.

For those of you who don't read the Community Chit Chat forum, http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=5042. No reasons have been stated publicly, at least not that I've seen. <speculation on>One wonders whether the abrupt disavowal of the letter directing the Odyssey and MER cuts kicked his legs out from under him in his efforts to balance the budget, and he decided he couldn't continue to make positive change if he wasn't going to be permitted to make difficult funding decisions.<speculation off>

--Emily

Posted by: JRehling Mar 26 2008, 05:43 PM

Disclaimer: For about a month now, I've suspected that the Mars issue was going to blow up, although I didn't see this coming (which may not be "Mars" related). This had the feel of the kind of thing that would end up as a banned topic on the board, so I did a lot of my discussion off-board in e-mails with people. I've been surprised, even, that it hasn't become a heated topic.

I don't want to conflate the headlined topic (which AFAIK could be for ANY reason) with anything else, but I've been saying in back channels for a while that there was a war coming and that it was a curious time in which no one wanted to say there was a war coming. When you get slides from HQ calling the arguments of scientists "myths", it's clear that the war has started.

When we discuss certainly non-heated questions like whether Uranus or Neptune deserves the next mission to either of them, or when we see the slightly more heated question of whether a jovian mission should pay more attention to Io (et al) or Europa, what we're seeing is that prioritization is surfacing as a hot issue. That will not go away, and somehow, coming up with a means to address future prioritization requires a BIG organizational effort in NASA and the community. There's so much money involved, that as you have more "interested" parties, you'll start to run out of disinterested parties. And the way it's being done now has a "welcome to amateur hour" flavor to it. Should Mars get 50% of the planetary science budget or 20%? And why? These are huge questions that have been managed with caprice. The stated reasons on both sides are uncompelling ("This is the way it's usually been done" vs. "We owe it to the current grad students who want to base their careers around Mars.").

In the medium term, we may have a tense and strife-filled debate about Mars vs. everything else. Heads may roll, missions may be cancelled or delayed. But the real point isn't Mars. It's how to prioritize in general. In the Sixties, there was nothing to worry about. Only the Moon, Mars, and Venus were within range, and neither Venus nor Mars had ever been seen up close. Alternating opportunities between Venus and Mars with the Mariner program worked just fine and made no one unhappy. Even through the Voyagers, we were still giving the major objects a once-over. Mars got its starring moment with Viking, Venus was too inhospitable to invite the same thing there, and the giant planets got their orbiters. The peace ends as the initial reconnaissance ends.

Now we have several opportunities that are individually worthy of commanding more funding than they collectively can receive. Hence, we have a scarcity of precious resources, which is the cause of most wars. Allocating precious resources can take place by capricious fiat from smoke-filled rooms, or in an open (and inevitably political) process. Right now, there is no system. There has to be. That's the main issue right now. Mars is just an example of what will be fought over if the organizational structure for prioritization is not built up.

Posted by: Mariner9 Mar 26 2008, 06:04 PM

I agree that the debates have barely begun.

This is starting to remind me of the 200-2003 period when the Pluto mission was canceled, and Europa orbiter kept. Then people lobbied for the Pluto mission to be restored, and Europa was cut (many speculated this was done as a message to the community to stop the lobbying). Then Pluto was restored by lobbying from the science community and ultimately Congress, over the initial objections of the Administration.

I bring this up not to ignite debates about those particular events, but to demonstrate what happens when funds are limited, and not all worthy missions can fly. At the very least things get muddy, and often times get ugly.

An outer planets flagship and to a lesser extent Mars Sample Return have been bandied about for this entire decade.

Then the Fiscal 2009 budget proposal came out, with the Flagship finally started, new lunar missions show up almost out of the blue, MSR research started, and the dramatic cuts to the MEP.

I suspected the MEP cuts were going to bring things to a boil. And it looks to me like that is happening (wheather or not Alan's resignation was connected).

Posted by: djellison Mar 26 2008, 06:11 PM

I've moved two posts that are about a broader issue than AS's resignation into this one where I think they are more appropriate.

Posted by: djellison Mar 26 2008, 06:33 PM

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

Posted by: blairf Mar 26 2008, 08:17 PM

Following the resource allocation question to a natural conclusion leads to an uncomfortable place. If you have to choose between Titan, Io, Mars then why can't I throw into the mix some astronomy, or High Energy Physics, or developmental biology, or gene therapy or anti-malarials, or hospitals or.....

The free-market has its faults but is a good way of allocating resources - invisible hand etc. Absent that all you have is politics, which explains why academia seems to be the bitchiest world of work.

Budgets trundle along fine so long as all play the 'last year plus 5%' game, as soon as you have the full-blown debate then what usually happens is:

1 - Special interest group 1 makes its case
2 - Special interest group 2 makes its case
3 - Huge bun fight ensues with much blood spilt
4 - Higher outside authority called in to mediate
5 - Higher authority solicits opinion from further external special interest groups
6 - Second round of bun fight now fought at higher level
7 - Higher authority decides he's had enough and defunds special interest groups 1 and 2

Long story short, either planetary science moves into some form of free-market system (philanthropy?) or it has to broker a back room deal that avoids this debate getting toxic.

Posted by: vjkane Mar 26 2008, 09:07 PM

I am deeply, deeply saddened by Alan's departure. Having watched many organizations fail for lack of leadership, I know that Alan was just such a leader. He is among a small, select group.

As for how we get out of this mess of feuding fiefdoms (whether or not that was the cause of Alan's departure), I'll share my perspective. In the mid-80s when planetary exploration in NASA was near death, the community put together a prioritized set of missions. (I'm traveling and can't just look in my library to give you the name of the report.) From that vision, Mars Observer, Cassini, CRAF (sadly cancelled), and the Discovery program was born. Since then, however, the big decisions seems to have come from administrator fiat. The Mars program with its faster, cheaper, and more failure prone mantra. Then the decision to do to MER's rather than one (at the expense of an American-French lander for Rosetta and other lost opportunities). The Europa orbiter has been a succession of on, off, on with stupidity written all over it, off again decision made by NASA administrators.

Alan (and I don't know what role other senior NASA administration played) attempted to set a new balance. The problem with management by decree is that it brings out all kinds of ugly politics because if you can apply enough pressure to the decision maker or get him/her replaced, you can change the decision without having to compromise with other stakeholders.

The astronomy world has developed a method to get beyond that process with its decadal studies. I hear that the internal politics can be brutal, but once the community decides, the community backs the priority list. The process certainly isn't perfect. The last decadal study grossly under estimated the cost of several of the high priority missions, especially JWST. (One way to avoid the hard decisions is to accept costs you know aren't real so everyone thinks their priorities are included. NASA is now putting more resources in cost estimations for these efforts to lessen this problem in the future.)

I think that the planetary program needs its own vetting of priorities by the community. (I seem to vaguely remember that such a process is under way or will start soon.) Unfortunately, the solar system has three expensive priority targets -- Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn -- along with a myriad of targets that get no where near the attention they should in a more perfect world (err, solar system). It is simply impossible to do 'A' level efforts (that a grade of A American style of grading for those used to the British system with its E, O, A (and my apologies if I mangled the British system)) for all these targets. The community needs to decide if we simply ignore some targets, rotate targets (which Alan was trying to do), or accept B and/or C level work for all of them. There is no right answer, but the planetary community needs to decide which is the one it can best live with. And then stand by it.

Posted by: Mariner9 Mar 26 2008, 10:58 PM

But there is a decadal study in the planetary world. The last such full report came out about five years ago, and the gist of its reccomendations have been followed.

It reccommended that mid-range missions be funded to cover tasks that Discovery was just not up to. (aka: New Fronteirs). First priority was a Kuiper belt mission, and Pluto was a good start since it was the largest Kuiper Belt object. Hence, New Fronteirs #1 - New Horizons Pluto Probe.

Second set of suggested missions was Jupiter Orbiter with probes, Comet sample return, Venus in-situ analysis, and Lunar Sample Return. New Fronteirs #2 was the Juno Orbiter. The Venus mission turned out to be technically too challenging, the Comet Sample Return was out of the budget range, but the Lunar Sample mission was the run-off canidate mission up against Juno.


The report suggested flying one flagship every decade, a New Frontiers every 3 years, a Discover mission every 18 months. It also said that if you could not fly them at that frequency due to budget limitations, you should keep the general ratio of missions as it was presented, and spread out the frequency.

What has evolved since then is a New Fronteirs every 5 years, Discovery every 3, and (cross your fingers) a flagship every decade.

So it seems to me that the planetary sciences community is already doing a farily good job with planning, and that NASA headquarters takes them seriously (even if not every reccomendation is followed).

Posted by: vjkane Mar 26 2008, 11:21 PM

Greg,
Good catch! You're right, I had forgotten about that effort. However, it *excluded* any discussion of these priorities relative to Mars. That was missing piece that I was addressing. How much funding should go to each? The previous path (pre-FY09 budget proposal) favored Mars and precluded outer planet flagship missions. The new path enables an outer flagship at the cost of thrashing the well established Mars exploration program. So what I would like to see is the community combine priorities for the two programs. Both programs have done a great job within their spheres.


Whoops. Got confused as to who did the catching. My apologies!

Posted by: nprev Mar 28 2008, 03:32 PM

JR, that was a terrific analysis, and I think you've made an important observation. I'm actually quite surprised that NASA doesn't have such a formalized prioritization/ranking process already, and oddly enough they might do well to look at how the DoD does it.

Brief description: There are twelve or so "combatant commands" (COCOMs) across DoD, which are administrative structures that divide responsibilty for military operations either geographically or functionally. (The NASA analog for this might be establishing evaluation offices for each major area: Venus/Mercury, Mars, Jupiter/Saturn, Uranus/Neptune, Pluto/KBOs, asteroids/comets, Earth/Moon/Sun). The COCOM commanders examine their mission areas and look for shortfalls in capabilities and emerging sustainment issues for current systems, and then derive a list of prioritized requirements. These are submitted to the Joint Requirements Oversight Committee (JROC) annually, which in turn generates a prioritized list of programs that ultimately become requests for funding.

The key here would be having a very balanced, and ideally impartial NASA JROC in terms of community representation and viewpoint. I'd recommend staffing the board with non-NASA affiliated academics with cross-cutting experience (Phil Stooke would be a good choice! )

Anyhow, hope that wasn't boring, and I'm sure that I just reinvented the wheel except made it square this time...

Posted by: djellison Mar 28 2008, 08:04 PM

Good words at NW

"While I have not agreed with all his decisions, I think that Alan Stern's tenure at SMD has been a huge boost to space science and his resignation is truly unfortunate. Also unfortunate, however, is the amount of misinformation being spread (often with the best intentions) by people without a full grasp of the facts.
For example, "Anonymous manager" used MER operations as an example of "overzealous spending", pointing out "a 75% reduction in productivity for a 20% budget cut" on a project with "300 individuals driving two rovers". The facts are the following: The proposed budget cut, that was to be applied to the remaining funds in FY08, was roughly 40%. One rover was to be cut back from the current standard 80% duty cycle (due to the way Mars time aligns with a standard work shift) to 60% (this does not include the fact that the rovers are not commanded on weekends), a 25% reduction. In addition, the second rover that was to be hibernated (not killed) still required weekly contacts and some minimum amount of engineering analysis and commanding to maintain its viability in the dynamic martian environment; let's say this is an 75% reduction. This still comes out to ~50% overall, more than a proportional 40%, but unfortunately project expenditures are never linear. As for the 300 people driving the rovers, total MER staffing (management, operations, IT support, data processing, etc.) at JPL is roughly 50 FTEs; the larger number quoted accounts for part-time individuals and the large science team, many of whom receive minimal funding.

It is fair to question the scientific usefulness and management efficiency of any mission, particularly those in their extended phases. MER undergoes detailed external (non-JPL) science and management reviews at least annually investigating these issues, and so far they have concluded that it represents an excellent science value for the expenditure and that the operations budget is lean and reasonable. Your opinion may vary.

There are many troubling issues with costs and overruns withing SMD, and many places (certainly including JPL!) where blame can be assigned. But while I welcome a spirited (no pun intended) discussion, I think we should try to avoid opinions masquerading as facts.

Anonymous MER staffer"

Posted by: JRehling Mar 28 2008, 09:07 PM

The problem with a scarcity of resources is that it means that unfairness is a given. It's a question of what unfairness will happen, not if.

There's nothing about the existence of Europa/Titan that automatically makes the other one less interesting. But one of them is going to bump the other in the queue.

I have a fetishistic glee in momentarily considering the attention that X would get if it were the only other world in the solar system. If only Earth and Pallas, or only Earth and Uranus orbited Sol, there would be feverish interest in exploring this one other world. It would be contemplated with almost philosophical wonder. Literature would celebrate it as an alternate Earth. (This implicitly did happen with the Moon in the Sixties, when it became the only other world in clear focus.) When the many-ness of solar system worlds leads to inevitable decreases of attention to those places.

The problems with coming up with a mechanism for prioritization are:

1) A lack of disinterested parties. This is common in politics. The mayor has personal investments in X. The people who can best advise you on the oil business get paychecks from the oil business.

2) There is no real bottom line in space science. Pick any world you like, and I can depict a future for you in which we utterly ignore its exploration, for the benefit of exploring the other worlds, and there is no tangible consequence. (Until the day we have to move off-planet in massive space arks.)

If you have a clear set of guidelines, you can cut through #2. I don't think we see a lot of that out of NASA. That's the problem with the tenuous connection between political support and funding. Rah-rah stands that are "for" everything are the main alternative to apathy. But it doesn't drive prioritization.

If someone makes astrobiology very clearly the main purpose, or the #2 purpose, or the #12 purpose, of space exploration, then a lot of decisions get easy. As long as it's hazily defined, we'll have wars. Of course, it's not the only such issue, but one of the big ones now.

Posted by: gpurcell Mar 28 2008, 10:12 PM

Unfortunately, there is no real solution to the budget fights except to let the fights occur. While a JROC-type approach sounds good in theory, in practice the military has a great deal more latitude to spread resources around. A specific command may not get a high-priority request filled this budget cycle, but they will be able to reapply again next fiscal year.

In the NASA context, on the other hand, the stakes are much higher. Losing a flagship decision means that community is shut out not for one or two fiscal years but rather for 15 to 20 fiscal years (remember the Cassini start was in 1988/1989) long enough that it ends careers, often before they begin. The losers of the Titan/Europa flagship mission realistically have to plan for a start date for a flagship mission to their planet in the 2025 range. And even then the losing "team" has to worry about losing two contests in a row and seeing a 30-40 year gap between mission starts.

Given that sobering scenario, nothing NASA can do will make all of the players even moderately happy.

Posted by: vjkane Mar 28 2008, 11:19 PM

The process for prioritizing planetary missions really isn't that different than the process for prioritizing astronomy missions. There are as many camps in the astronomy world as there are in the planetary world. In many of the cases the camps in the planetary world aren't even between destinations as between measurement types. The guys (and gals!) who study samples have their own priorities and are the big pushers behind MSR. Then there are the guys who build remote sensing instruments vs. the guys who build in situ instruments. I talked with one very senior Mars scientist (I promised anonymity) and he says there's a big fight between those who want to delay MSR so we know better where to sample and those who just want samples (and funding) for their labs as soon as possible.

Politics are always messy. It can either be autocratic or democratic. There are proven processes, assuming you have good leaders (who are pushing the process, and not their own priorities), that can create consensus. There are already good processes within the Mars and the rest of the solar system communities. Those processes need to be merged.

Posted by: Stu Jun 13 2008, 10:29 PM

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_9567270, I think...

Posted by: jmjawors Jun 13 2008, 10:37 PM

That's GREAT news! Of course, it'll still have to be passed by the overall House and survive conference with the Senate. But it's a promising start.

Posted by: mike Jun 15 2008, 09:32 PM

Personally I think both Titan and Europa are interesting places to explore in general. I would also want the current funding on the rovers to continue, since they are the only resource like them currently on Mars and I think they will easily still surprise us with what they find. Therefore, funding must be increased. The ultimate expansion in human consciousness is worth the extra $50/year for the average taxpayer.