Hi Raoul -

They can save their money. The goal here is to pretend that the issues of Moon based astronomy were not examined by the CAPS team, and further it is to deny consideration of the Moon for NEO detection. Welier is up at APL, I believe, so to some extent this conference probably represents the cosmologists last gasp attempt at controlling NASA astronomy bugets and programs. Morrison is still at Ames, and just put together the Porco-Neukum deal. That's why you get what you see.

The organizers will later attempt to pass off the conference proceedings as gospel truth.

As far as European participation goes, with the US at this point it doesn't matter. I don't think that Hu will embarass the US when the China-Russia agreements are announced about 2 weeks from now. I expect the agreements will cover the new Soyuz life support and electronic systems, and docking mechanisms.

If they go to Klipr I would be surprised, but who knows. For sure Europe has its existing investment in the new Soyuz systems, and it is not likely that Russia will want to irritate its European partners with the deals, so its likely that they may already have some idea as to what China and Russia will agree to. Who knows, if Soyuz was objected to by EU, then maybe Klipr. I sure am glad that Semenov is no longer in charge of Energia; the new young management team there is doing a first rate job.

If Griffin has some rabbit he plans to pull out of a hat, I heven't heard about it yet, but then I'm a long long way from home right now.

So my guess is that that's when Europe will react: end of december. The important conferences will be held elsewhere.