[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

I went to Mt Teide twice as a teenager - it's an astonishing, barren, beautiful place - the plateau on the top of Tenerife from which the final tip of the volcano spikes upwards.....

Anyway - I spotted this vid at the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4767403.stm

Doug

[djellison]

Well - you could look at it 1000 ways, but I have no doubt whatsoever that ITAR would restrict any detailed transfer of information in some way...but there's also another factor

ESA "Hi, we're building a rover, we want some help in the design stage"
JPL "Sure, give us a really big fat chunk of money and we'll show you how to do it"
ESA "Oh- you want money. Umm. Arrr...that's European Tax Payers money and they'd rather we spent that in Europe on European engineers and technology"

Or...

EU Public "Why did they give all that money to pay for American stuff...why can't we build it ourselves here?"

Now of course, you could then argue "hmm - we spent all that money and it didn't work, why didn't we get the JPL guys to help build this thing" retrospectively...

Part legal, part political. I would love the EU just to go to JPL and order one 'off the shelf' for a sensible figure - but to be honest - building the rover isn't the problem.. EDL is.

Doug