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/

[vjkane]

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.