[X] My Assistant

[belleraphon1]

All...

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

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

Craig

[ElkGroveDan]

Knowing Alan as a sensible doing-more-for-less kind of manager, I don't think he would have suggested an extreme or damaging proposal. I think your scenario is close, but more likely Alan proposed targeted reductions in funding with a plan to get more science out of fewer dollars. Then someone affected went public spinning it as "shutting down a rover" when in fact the plan was far less draconian than that. Then, as you say, if Griffin didn't back him or defend him he would have chosen to step down. I do believe however that whatever was proposed was subject to interpretation. There are always two sides to a story, and I've grown to appreciate Alan Stern's good sense, so that's why I think there's a bit more to it.

[djellison]

Then someone affected went public spinning it as "shutting down a rover" when in fact the plan was far less draconian than that.

No - they really were getting ready to put a full hibernation plan into place, which would have been sent up next week. I have no doubt about that. People were figuring out how to do MER part time and work on something else as well to help with the money to reliable keep things going.

And lest we forget, there was an impact on Odyssey as well, something the public really barely know about.

I think people are trying to second guess who thought what and when - probably in the wrong thread. What the hell, I'll have a go as well.

What I do know is that Monday was the Mars program going to MER and saying 'you're only going to get $X from now, what can you do' - and the answer had to be going to full hibernation on Spirit and loosing a lot of team which would have been near impossible to rebuild. The plan was real. The decision to cut funding for Odyssey and MER would have had to occur above Odyssey and MER. The resulting impact was perhaps not appreciated until the MER team meeting (and I presume a matching Odyssey meeting that's gone less well documented). You can be sure as hell that Squyres et.al. tried to think of any and every way to keep operating two rovers - but there is a financial floor beyond which you simply can't keep the people on board to operated both rovers. Perhaps above MER they thought "Yeah - MER can handle a few million less" without realizing that after 4 years, they're operating about as efficiently as is possible. It'd be interesting to compared the per-week cost of operating the first 90 sols (not the $800m/180sols - but the chunk of that $800m that was actual operating costs during that 90 sols) and compare it to today. That critical mass of engineering and scientists you need to operate them would be just about impossible to rebuild ( and utterly impossible if an $8m cut for '09 were carried thru ). If out take out the dust storm - last year could have been suprisingly productive for Spirit - home plate finished, and south to the interesting features there. She was back to 800 Whrs can you believe - and then the dust storm kind of ruined that - but hey - we learnt about dust-storms instead. If she can survive the next winter, I think it reasonable to suggest that 800 Whrs and an active summer could happen again - and, we'll have survived three Martian winters - a useful scientific baseline for future long term exploration.

This is why, in the other thread, I question the sensibility of a Mars 'program'. MSL is the problem here, for whatever reason. The challenge was put to the Mars program to find further MSL funding itself - and it's decision was to go to Odyssey and MER and say 'you can't have the normal extended funding anymore' . What Odyssey and MER came back with in response to that probably surprised a lot of people - but they were not doing it for a reaction, they were doing it because that's all they could do with the cut they were being presented with. I see MER and Odyssey getting hit as no more appropriate than say, hitting Aqua, Terra and Aura to be honest.

Perhaps Alan was expecting the Mars program to sort this out for themselves, for JPL to find cash from elsewhere to top up the MSL budget without impacting other missions. When they didn't or couldn't do that, I think Alan was probably prepared to let them hang out to dry for a while, see if they capitulated internally and found the cash somehow. With the threat of too many 'NASA kills Mars rovers' headlines, I think that the money would have been found from inside somehow. Griffin instead capitulated over him, and thus rendered ineffective Alan's commendable efforts in trying to get some honesty and accountability within the mission design and ATLO process. With that precedent set, then missions of the future would try to pull the same thing, and thus Alan essentially becomes a Sherif with a Colt that his boss swopped out half the rounds for blanks. It's untenable.

Two things are wrong in that picture. The treatment of all Mars missions as one big accounting code, and the over runs of MSL. The MSL overruns are massive. HQ moved the goal posts on them (pre-Stern), inappropriately, requiring further engineering work which was never accounted for at the beginning. There may have been further MSL budget growth for other reasons, but at least part of it was HQ instigated.

But why a Mars 'program'? Why not an inner-planets program? LRO goes over so Messenger gets cut? Outer planets : Juno goes over, so the Cassini extension gets cut in half. I don't think that's the right way of doing things. But I don't know what the right way is. I don't think anyone does. Alan was having a damn good try, but if you're not left to get on with your job in the best way you think, then there's nothing to be done but walk out the door.

Doug