Lee wrote:
I'd like to see our probes retrieved at some future point just because I think they need to be saved for posterity.

Alex writes:
As a U.S. congressman once said in the tight fiscal environment of the early 1970's when scientists pleaded for a Pluto mission for "posterity's sake": "Posterity will just have to wait." Plenty of money is spent on just getting robotic spacecraft to accomplish their primary task of collecting science data. Do you really believe that the added expense and risk (which are not trivial) of preserving some futuristic goal of "retrieval", so the spacecraft can become a museum piece, is worth the effort?

Alex R. Blackwell
University of Hawaii