>No big 'gambles' (PE/PKO mission).

Rather a strange statement given that the relative costs & complexity of the Mars & especially Europe search for organics & the quite simple PKB mission. In many ways, PKB is easier to fly than the average Mars orbiter & a lot easier than any Europa orientated Jovian orbiter: the biggest problem has always been the high initial delta v requirements (mitigated, of course, by the fact that there's no orbital delta v at the other end in a flyby); the long wait between launch & primary data return; & consistent bad mouthing of the project by certain scientific claques, mostly associated with Dan Goldin & his astrobiology push....

... which in summary is the main problem with the hyping of this subject within NASA: far from improving the space science environment within the agency, it's greedily gulped up everyone else's money without adding a dime to the total science budget. The body count is growing daily, with Champollion/DS4 & PKE the most spectacular losses so far; & given the very real risk that when the first big landers will come up negative on the subject - highly likely; unless evidence of life really is so commonplace on Mars that a relatively crude instrument like Beagle2 has a passable chance of detecting it - there'll be a budgetary backlash which shuts down great slabs of the space science program, the new NASA administration really need to stop indulging it to the same extent that Dan G. It's too big a risk.

Searching for life is fine. Buillding a program so obsessed with this speculative science that it becomes impossible to fly anything else is a sucker's bet; & we can't afford that kind of foolishness right now.

>No Bucks, no Buck Rogers. Guess the bucks stop here then.
>
>Marcia

PKB DID have Buck Rogers on its side (which is why the mission has survived every attempt by Dan Goldin & his cronies to kill it off); as do a number of other potential missions which could be flown if so much money wasn't being tied up in this line of scientific pork (& stripped of all the pretty motives, that's all astrobiology research really is).

Of course: when a public backlash along the lines of the PKB movement pulls a astrobiology project back from the brink of cancellation to pay for PKB, i'll believe that there might be a real need to push it....