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[Mark6]

Today I heard this on NPR: Exploring a moon by boat

The mission could launch around 2016 and be sailing on Titan around 2022 — if this team gets through a highly competitive selection process to get funding from NASA. Stofan and her colleagues are busy working up their proposal for when NASA begins to accept ideas for future Discovery-class missions.

Quick Google search on Dr. Stofan's name found this: What Next for Titan?

Ellen Stofan has a Discovery-class Titan lake lander proposal. I've not seen the presentation, but a friend who has tells me that it is less capable than the ESA lake lander proposed for TSSM. (This would make sense – ESA had a budget of ~$1B for just the lake lander and balloon. Stofan has just $450M and has to fit a carrier craft and launch vehicle into that budget.) The 2007 report did not look at lake landers. I know of Stofan by reputation, and she's highly competent. However, fitting in a carrier, lander (with entry shell), and launch vehicle within a Discovery mission budget seems ambitious. Perhaps this could be done with a New Frontiers budget ($650M with the launch vehicle provided by NASA outside this budget), although the 2007 budget suggested that a budget twice this amount would be needed just for an atmopheric probe.

Aside from above quote's understandable skepticism of the Discovery-class price tag, where would plutonium for this mission come from? I thought it is all already allocated?