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RIP Dawn
Such a shame. However, I'll leave the politics to those in the know.
It's dead for the moment although I suppose there could always be a Phoenix-like rebirth down the track. We are left without a large main belt asteroid mission. Does anyone have any idea whether either the Deep Impact or Stardust buses have the dV to manage (perhaps with a gravity assist or two?) a flyby of either Vesta or especially Ceres? (Or failing that, what about Pallas?) P |
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RIP Dawn
"Phil Bagust" wrote in message
news Such a shame. However, I'll leave the politics to those in the know. It's dead for the moment although I suppose there could always be a Phoenix-like rebirth down the track. We are left without a large main belt asteroid mission. Does anyone have any idea whether either the Deep Impact or Stardust buses have the dV to manage (perhaps with a gravity assist or two?) a flyby of either Vesta or especially Ceres? (Or failing that, what about Pallas?) http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/0....ap/index.html Cost overruns are normal in the space business. The idea that you just shut down missions or ask engineers to sit on their hands for a year is no way to run a space program. |
#3
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RIP Dawn
In article ,
Michael Rhino wrote: Cost overruns are normal in the space business. Only because there is such a tradition that they are automatically forgiven whenever they happen. Note that NEAR *underran* its budget. It's just a matter of competent management and proper budgeting (including adequate reserves). Overruns should be rare, the result of nasty surprises like major technical problems or a launch supplier backing out. Part of the problem is that the Discovery program has forgotten one of its original rules: that cheaper missions have priority in selection. That was done partly to discourage people from loading up their missions until the most optimistic possible estimate put them $10 under the official cost cap, making overruns almost inevitable. I hate to say it, because I really liked the mission, but Dawn showed many of the signs of an underbid, out-of-control project. -- spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | |
#4
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RIP Dawn
In article ,
Jim Kingdon wrote: original rules: that cheaper missions have priority in selection. That was done partly to discourage people from loading up their missions until the most optimistic possible estimate put them $10 under the official cost cap, making overruns almost inevitable. Couldn't you have overruns either way? Oh yes, for sure. But a situation where you *must* come in under a specific ceiling, but there is otherwise no penalty for higher costs, encourages you to design an ambitious mission loaded with science -- that being the major competitive element, since all proposals are expected to come in at the same price -- and then find some way to cook the books to make it cost just under the ceiling. It seems to encourage much more extravagant lies, since the payoff for getting the cost estimate down those last few percent is so high. ...either way those in charge need to have a backbone about overruns (and cancelling missions which encounter them seems like the only way that I've seen to handle them which makes any sense). Agreed. -- spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | |
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