[X] My Assistant

[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/

[belleraphon1]

All...

have no idea why.... ?????

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/08032...rn-resigns.html

Craig

[JRehling]

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.