Collective Denial At Planetary Science: Vision 2050 Workshop

1. It is so expensive because everything is on the bleeding edge which requires a large investment in research and development.

   Imagine how much field biology trips would cost if after each trip the researcher junked their old equipment, including their4-wheel drive, to buy the latest most expensive equipment for the next trip.

   The two Mars rovers that have lasted over a decade are a good example. Instead of following up with a couple of dozen clones sent to more rugged locations they were replaced with a single bigger and more expensive one. And now a newer and better one is being developed.

   1. And now a newer and better one is being developed.

      To be fair, Mars2020 is in essence what you are asking for. Not only is it closely based on MSL, it even uses some parts left over from MSL’s development. The main changes are fixes (like the wheels), mission specific elements (science packages), and a few experimental features that are ready for field-testing (like the improved auto terrain navigation.)

      The problem isn’t just changing each version, it’s that there’s no funding model that allows a production line to be established. You don’t get economies of scale by hand-reproducing previous units, you have to do work at the beginning to modularise and standardise the production side.

      1. I disagree. There were lots of changes. For example, the EDL system was significantly redesigned to improve landing accuracy. But, just as from a high-level perspective, why did Mars 2020 have a phase A and B? Those phases of mission development are about coming up with a conceptual design for the spacecraft, and developing a preliminary design for the hardware. If it really was a reflight of the MSL hardware, they would already have had a preliminary design. They would already have had actual blueprints. If that were the case, why not skip phase A and B and go directly to a preliminary design review? (Or, more realistically, have a very short phase B to dust off and modify the existing design, before going into the preliminary design review.)

2. When it comes to the“what is the big question” part, I think the lack of a good answer is a result of the meeting’s organization, which paralleled the last planetary Decadal Survey. That document, for good or ill, tried to place all NASA planetary science into three categories, each of which could be described by a simple sentence which any idiot (or congressman) could understand and consider a big deal.

   Those were “Is there life anywhere else in the universe?”, “How did the Earth and the solar system form?” and “How does the solar system work?” The last actually covers the majority of NASA-funded planetary science, but the Decadal Survey treated it as a catch-all, “everything else” category, covering everything which lacked a single, unified sound bite.

   Your comment addresses the discussion at the Vision 2050 meeting’s “Workings” session. I’m not sure if you were there on Monday for the “Life” and “Origins” sessions. But, I think it’s natural that the “everything else” people would have trouble coming up with a single, unifying sound bite. I’ve got a three-sentence version for my part of “everything else”, and with work, I could probably get it down to one. But that doesn’t cover the whole catch-all category. I took a tiny bit of comfort that at least one other person in the room realized we need to work on that. (Two other people, if you count Keith.)

   When it comes to an addiction to big missions and spacecraft, I’m not sure who is to blame, but I did see it. At this meeting, and at the OPAG meeting a week before, people were definitely obsessing about multi-billion dollar missions. Worse, they were also taking about launching them on the SLS, with the idea planetary science would get three SLS launches per decade. When I asked one of the chairs of the “Ocean Worlds” roadmap committee why they thought that possible or who pay for the launches, the reply I got was not too clear. Something along the lines of “Oh, I don’t know, but last year, someone at headquarters said it might be possible, and wouldn’t it be great if we could?”

   Remembering the original Voyager mission (a Mars lander to be launched on a Saturn V, later replaced by a scaled down version called Viking), I really worry about this obsession with using SLS for planetary missions. And when I raise this concern with other scientists, half of the time the reaction I get make me sympathize with Cassandra.

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