First to say, I defer to no-one in my admiration for the on-going Cassini mission, but am currently lamenting the fact that she lacks a SCAN PLATFORM!! (i.e. the instruments are all bolted to the main bus of the spacecraft). As I'm sure you're all aware, this means "dead-time" when the high-gain antenna has to be pointed earthbound for data data downlinking, with the consequence that the cameras and other sensors are pointing into the void. I realise that budgetary constraints were the reason - but what a shame!!!!
I can only compare this to the sublime Voyager missions - they both zipped through Saturn's inner system in less than 48 hours, but returned images of all major moons (bar Phoebe close up), the rings, the planet itself, discovered half a dozen new moons, conducted occultations of the earth, the sun or stars by Saturn/satellites/the rings, detected ring-spokes and aurorae and so on and so on. They both rolled back and forth like spinning tops during the encounters, but with those big high-gain dishes fixed on the Deep Space Network.
Carolyn Porco at Nasa is a big Voyager fan, and I can understand why - the Voyagers will be very difficult to top in terms of scientific value for money.
Cassini came within 80,000 km of Calypso and 40,000 km of Epimetheus on Friday, but observations were impossible to conduct because of the lack of a scan platform for the cameras and other remote-sensing instruments. If someone had come to me, I'd have happily donated a few hundred dollars to the cause!!!
Whinge over though, what a fabulous mission! Agree with DTB that personnel responsible for targeting are show-boating a little, and coming up with some beautiful 'to-die-for' shots of moons and rings in close proximity.