"Allen W. McDonnell" wrote in message
...
Personally I would rather they delay the launch a year and get a higher
power launch vehicle to deliver it sooner than currently planned. In the
old days NASA managed to get probes to the planets quickly, these days we
seem to always be doing half a dozen flyby's for cheap gravity assists
instead of just burning more fuel at the launch.

Even if it means the mission never gets funded?

And I think you overestimate exactly how quickly NASA got probes to planets.

For one thing, we've never had an orbiter of Mercury. That takes a lot of
work.