[X] My Assistant

[Stu]

"MSL Heat Shield Woes" - Aviation Week

Anyone else see this?

[edstrick]

"...Cassini was originally supposed to be the first mission using the Mariner Mark II series ..."

JPL Director Bruce Murray <I think> had a major article in Science magazine in the mid 80's explaining in detail how the newly concieved Mariner Mark II program would provide the basis for continuing low cost planetary exploration. Mission costs <I think> were to be well sub-1-Billion-$, achieved in part by reusing modifications on a common spacecraft bus, much the way Mariners 69, 71, 73 and Viking Orbiters had massive design heritage.

The first missions were to be Comet Rendezvous / Asteroid Flyby CRAF and Cassini.

Well.... as the mission pair cost past umpteen billion, CRAF was nuked and Cassini was descoped to (among other things) a No-Scan-Platform mission.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

I'd really like to see the story of how Mariner Mark II went form good intentions to budget control hell. Watching MSL, I'm getting massive deja vu.

[mcaplinger]

I'd really like to see the story of how Mariner Mark II went form good intentions to budget control hell.

One big reason is that the Cassini and CRAF missions were not really very similar, so the idea of sharing a common spacecraft was not that valid to start with.

As I have pointed out before when these "common spacecraft" discussions come up, there is huge commonality at the box level. Regardless of how different spacecraft may look on the outside, much of the guts are built out of catalog items.