Hi All

The ESA's talking about a Pluto Orbiter for c. 2035, so the wait is even longer for people wanting a long stay in Pluto space. And we'll be waiting a long while yet for orbiters to Uranus and Neptune.

Why they can't make general purpose interplanetary probe buses to attach experiments to I don't know. More, cheaper space-probes might result if there was control software that allowed probes to be occasionally monitored instead of continually tracked.

Gary had a point about how idiotic it was not to explore Mars with more MER class rovers instead of wasting a few billion on a Mars Science Lab that might dig its own grave on landing.

Adam