On Sun, 19 Mar 2006 00:14:33 GMT, "Eric" wrote:

The Terrestial Planet Finder gets the axe, now...

(Basic translation)
"Don't even THINK about it, we want someone to play golf on Mars by 2030,
damn it!".

*snort*
Here we go again. "Wah! We want the gigabucks to go to OUR program!
Not YOUR program."


Water Discovery May Not Spur Space Mission

LOS ANGELES - To scientists scanning the cosmos for signs of life, the
stunning discovery of what appears to be water on an obscure moon orbiting
Saturn couldn't come at a more pivotal time.

The science community is starting to whine about "no more flagship
missions, fund a bunch of smaller missions instead" and an Enceladus
mission is most certainly going to be in the flagship class, just like
the cancelled Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter and the now-off-the-radar Mars
Sample Return Mission.

And TPF just doesn't much excite me anyhow. "Woo hoo! We got a blurry
itty bitty image of a mega-Jupiter orbiting Epsilon Eridanus..." Cool,
I guess, but the fury over its cancellation seems way over the top to
me.

Brian