Subject says it all. People finally sat down and thought about how to do Europa right. They found the answer was: "It's too hard". Europa's problem can be summed up with one word: radiation. Europa is interesting mainly because of the exobiology thing. So someone says: "Okay, we'll land something on the surface of Europa and look for biological material churned up from the interior". Nope, the radiation environment due to the Jovian ionosphere is so terrible that any complex hydrocarbon on the surface of Europa would have been broken into something simpler, not obviously biological molecules. Next someone says, "Alright lets scan the planet with radar and look for that deep ocean". Nope again, supposably the radiation environment would defeat any sort of practical radar system. Europa is too hard to explore cheaply.

Gary