Another is the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope -- a revolutionary new 6.5-meter telescope with a huge 3-degree viewfield which would map the entire sky for faint objects at hundreds of times the rate it has ever been done before, repeatedly sweeping the whole sky for objects down to the 24th magnitude every three or four days.

While LSST's usefulness for every kind of astronomy is obvious, its top two scientific uses have now been officially ranked as:

(1) the detection and accurate orbital mapping of at least 90% of all near-Earth objects in the inner Solar System down to a diameter of only 300 meters (allowing a long advance warning of any future collision by one of them with Earth); and
(2) the detection of fully 10,000 objects in the Kuiper Belt -- the iceballs, ranging from only a few kilometers in diameter up to the planet Pluto (and perhaps bigger), which are now known to make up a whole new previously unknown major section of the Solar System which utterly dwarfs the Asteroid Belt and is extremely important in understanding the System's beginning and development.
***********************************

Push comes to shove, I'd fund the LSST way before a mission to Pluto. Remember we have several asteroid & comet missions underway or funded. Yeah, I know that Pluto would be the 1st KBO studied.

-philw