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In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Pat) writes: |
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>Now isn't that always the kicker. It does seem stupid to drop |
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>a mission like Magellan, because there isn't 70 million a year |
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>to keep up the mission. You'd think that ongoing science could |
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>justify the money. JPL gets accused of spending more then neccessary, |
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>probably some validity in that, but NASA does put money into some |
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>things that really are Porcine. Oh well. |
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I attended a colloquium at Goddard last fall where the head of the |
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operations section of NASA was talking about what future missions |
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were going to be funded. I don't remember his name or title off hand |
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and I have discarded the colloquia announcement. In any case, he was |
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asked about that very matter: "Why can't we spend a few million more |
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to keep instruments that we already have in place going?" |
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His responce was that there are only so many $ available to him and |
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the lead time on an instrument like a COBE, Magellan, Hubble, etc |
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is 5-10 years minumum. If he spent all that could be spent on using |
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current instruments in the current budget enviroment he would have |
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very little to nothing for future projects. If he did that, sure |
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in the short run the science would be wonderful and he would be popular, |
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however starting a few years after he had retired he would become |
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one of the greatest villans ever seen in the space community for not |
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funding the early stages of the next generation of instruments. Just |
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as he had benefited from his predicessor's funding choices, he owed it |
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to whoever his sucessor would eventually be to keep developing new |
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missions, even at the expense of cutting off some instruments before |
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the last drop of possible science has been wrung out of them. |
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Covert C Beach |
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[email protected] |
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