Sfdebris.net

I heard about this on NPR and i immediately wanted to share it.

https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2017/0 ... 505402246/

Cassini was planned as a follow up to the very successful Voyager missions. I am not an expert but it seems likely that there will not be another major mission to Saturn for some time.

Well, unless of course we were to spot something on one of its moons.


youtu.be/3escvQEziag

I remember when Cassini was launched, their was protesting against it because it was nuclear-powered. Back then, I was a stupid kid who thought nuclear-powered space craft were a bad idea. I know better now.

Pity we won't be following it up any time soon. I just find the state of our space program pitiful. We should have had a Mars base thirty years ago, and been sending men to Saturn and launching star probes now.

Cassini had a hell of a run, though. I remember staying up one night to watch the first results and images come in from the Huygens probe, and now that I look back at it, I realise that was thirteen years ago. If anything, we need to send another lander to Titan or Enceladus before sending another orbiter to Saturn.

Titan really should be a priority, it's probably the most interesting body in the Solar System that isn't Earth unless Europa turns up major surprises.

NASA seems to have put the brakes on new flagship orbiters (why?), though ESA seems to entertain proposals for Uranus and Neptune missions from time to time.

PerrySimm wrote:NASA seems to have put the brakes on new flagship orbiters (why?), though ESA seems to entertain proposals for Uranus and Neptune missions from time to time.

Because US government has not run NASA semi-competently in decades?

Honestly, it seems to be more a problem of funding that jackknifes based on public opinion and shifting directions that depend on what ever administration is currently in charge (For example, I remember that Nixon had a hand in cancelling Apollo because it was closely linked with Kennedy, his political rival). And it isn't a left-right issue

I was speaking to a friend that worked for NASA a while back.

One of the problems is that NASA's funding is tied up with state politics. A senator wants money to fund part of NASA will put his vote in as long as part is going to fund in his state. So NASA projects end up spread over multiple locations with large amount of redundancy, conflicting goals and parts of projects completed competently while the overall mission is scrapped.

So NASA currently has a new Rover model but no real plans, capacity or goals to actually land in on another planet.

NASA is essentially hostage to Congressional funding and Presidential directive, so that means long-term plans have to be cheap to be at all attainable, and you can expect constantly shifting directives and priorities based on whatever speech someone though sounded good last month got spoken.