[X] My Assistant

[vjkane]

The most recent Aviation Week and Space Technology (9/8) has the following tidbit in a piece on NASA schedule delays:

"On the robotoic front, the testing schedule for a critical instrument for the Mars Science Laboratory -- dubbed SAM for Sample Analysis at Mars -- may delay launch of the advanced rover from its 2009 planetary window into 2011."

[gallen_53]

My reading of the tea leaves is the whole Mars Program is in serious trouble. JPL tried to do too big of a technological jump from MER to MSL and hit a brick wall. My impression is that we will be shifting away from Mars and focusing more on Venus probes (I am NOT happy about this). Both planets are extremely interesting. If anything MER showed Mars to be more interesting than we realized.

Venus exploration had previously not received the same attention as Mars. This was mainly due to the short life expectancy of anything reaching the Venusian surface (3 hours tops). It's politically difficult to justify the expense of sending something to another world that only survives for a couple hours (same problem with atmospheric probes to gas giants). That sort of argument was one of the reasons why MER was such an excellent concept, i.e. provides good science and political returns at a reasonable cost. Venus exploration has an additional political advantage in that it can be leverage against Global Warming concerns, i.e. the Venusian climate was ruined by a CO2 thermal runaway. Also Venusian EDL (Entry, Descent and Landing) tends to be easier than Martian EDL due to the denser atmosphere of Venus. The obvious downside with Venus is the horrific conditions on the Venusian surface, i.e. once you're below 50 km altitiude, it's raining sulfuric acid and you have to worry about supercritical CO2. I'm hoping we can get a Venus program up-and-running before the Mars program turns into a complete train wreck. We need to have some planetary program running in order to maintain our engineering expertise.

[mcaplinger]

My reading of the tea leaves is the whole Mars Program is in serious trouble. JPL tried to do too big of a technological jump from MER to MSL and hit a brick wall.

Is this view based on anything except your opinion and reading of the media reports?

I would suggest that further discussion on this thread wait for the outcome of the NASA HQ review.