1. Question 1 is a bit hard to answer as there are many factors
that affect the ranking, however this is how I see things in April,
2006. I put small missions first, because I think they will both
drive the need for R&A and force larger missions to become more
efficient. There is a danger of ranking R&A #1, as opposed to 2
(as I did) or lower, in that we'll then just be studying older and
older data, and that could erode congressional and public support
further. Clearly we need a balanced program and right now there is
a danger of the scale getting tipped. 2. I don't see the interest
or the commitment required for truely bold 'flagship' missions in
the present leadership; missions that are risky and expensive but
with great scientific potential. Better to maintain a regular
mission program, affordable in the current political climate, to
maintain expertise and the capability until future opportunities
arise. 3. Funding is cyclic, and the large expenditures for
flagship missions can happen when the cycle is up. R&A and
smaller missions wither quickly when not funded. Flagship missions
are of no benefit at all except to the very few team leaders who
get interviewed on TV unless the R&A and small missions are
there to keep the analysis productive. 4. We should rethink the
next Flagship mission in light of Cassini results (Titan/Enceladus)
5. Flagship missions cannot be abandoned. The cost of planetary
explorations keeps going up, and the scientific questions keep
getting more complex. While Discovery and NF are valuable and
should not be given up on, the return from flagship missions to
Europa, Enceledus, Titan and Venus are too critical to put on the
back burner. 6. Research and analysis funding should be separated
from mission funding, and should be stable. However, missions are
also extremely important, and large missions should not be
sacrificed just because they are expensive. Large flagship
missions, like the proposed, high-priority mission to Europa,
travel to targets and answer questions that simply cannot be
addressed with smaller, cheaper missions. Discovery missions seem
to be reaching the saturation point where the interesting science
which can be done cheaply has already been done; it is time to
spend the money to invest in a large, flagship mission to go to an
outer solar system target like Europa, even if it means delaying a
number of smaller missions. 7. It's difficult to say absolutely to
move money around without knowing how *much* is being moved. While
I feel that R&A should have a very high priority in order to
maximize return on the missions flown, there's clearly a trade-off.
That having been said, I'm also very disappointed at the lack of
any flagship-class missions in the works. Uranus and especially
Neptune are ripe targets for orbiters and ought to be visited if we
want to really understand the full contiuum of our planets. 8.
Flagship missions are great publicity, but the community which
expands our scientific knowledge depends on steady funding and as
many different sources of new data as possible. The biggest
projects do not always provide the most interesting data. 9.
Flagship missions are a waste of limited resources. Technological
advances will make Discovery and New Frontier missions more
productive. 10. The weak point of a Flagship mission is if it
should fail on launch or before arrival. 11. While I am in favor of
Flagship missions, in the near term they can be dispensed with in
favor of the less expensive missions and the R&A programs. At
some future time, when some measure of stability might return to
NASA, I would rate Flagship missions higher than in the present
instance. 12. Top priority should be given to
Astrobiology/Exobiology/Extrasolar Planetary Detection and
characterization, including detailed exploration of Europa, Titan,
and the ISM. Furthermore, funding for Astrobiology promotes great
interest from the public since the prospects for detecting even
primative life on other worlds is of great interest to most
individuals. 13. This is an obvious pyramid problem. Without
R&A, Discovery/New Frontier options are useless. Without these
smaller 'scout' programs, Flagship missions lose all scientific
merit. If the goal of the Flagship missions is not science, then do
not take money away from science programs to fund them. Thousands
of scientists rely on NASA SSE funding. Included in this is a very
large group of young, developing scientists. This is one of the
fastest growing science initiatives in the US. Young scientists
have a window of only ~5 years to build the foundation for a
successful career. To take away SSE funding for Flagship missions
will cripple the development of these scientists, thus having a
dramatic and disasterous effect on America's scientific community.
14. Flagship missions (Voyager, Galileo, Casssini) are of such
great return in science, technology, and involvement of science
community, and are so efficient in producing these, that they are
an essential, core part of the NASA program. Yet, a science
community is essential to justify and support missions and needs to
be supported, somehow. Thus, it is a contradiction to try to trade
flagship missions against basic support of the science community
(through R&R programs or whatever vehicle devised). A science
community without flagship missions, or flagship missions without a
science community, makes no sense. 15. In the case of flagship Mars
missions, the Mars Science Laboratory would appear to have enormous
capability and, given the plentitude of interesting sites for
exploration, could plausibly be flown at every other opportunity
almost indefinitely i.e., the cost of Mars flagship missions could
become relatively affordable if we capitalize on MSL. 16. The
scientific basis for 'Flagship' missions must be firmly established
BEFORE such missions are ever planned or supported. A rational
sequence of increasingly complex efforts should be the guiding
principle behind any 'Exploration' program. 17. The flagship
mission takes too much time so the technology used for the mission
has become obsolete. 18. A caveat on Flagship missions,questions 4
& 5. Once approved and started,they should be completed.
Cancelling them (or any mission) after substantial funds have been
expended, should only take place under the most extraordinary
circumstances. 19. failure of a flagship mission (this is a risky
business after all) could leave an unfillable hole in the
scientific community if such missions are allowed to pre-empt or
displace the smaller programs. if the small/medium mission and
R&A lines are healthy, the community can probably survive the
hiatus resulting from flagship failure and efforts to recover or
duplicate. 20. Flagship missions are great when we can have them,
but they do not provide the continuity and continuous space
interest and space presence as the smaller missions. I feel it is
better to push back Flagship missions and keep smaller missions
than to cancel smaller missions in favor of keeping Flagship
missions on track. None of the missions mean anything without the
R&A, which should not be cut. 21. Modern planetary science is
built upon the results of flagship class missions. Think of what
our current view of solar system science would look like if you
remove the results of Mariner, Viking, Voyager, Galileo, Magellan
and Cassini from the last thirty years of exploration. Small
missions are important but cannot take the place of major
exploration initiatives. R&A must support the program and be
sufficient to make use of data from missions, but cannot support a
viable solar system exploration by itself. 22. I realize that I am
not saying what you want to hear. I am a proponent of NASA's
proposed TPF missions, however. These are flagship missions, and
their eventual deployment is my highest priority. However, you
can't do any missions without a viable research community, so
R&A still ranks highest in this survey. 23. What I think is
that the big flagship missions are always underbudget and overrun
and a great waste of scarce resources. If money is not an issue
then do glagship, otherwise stop the big pork for some aerospace
corporations and instead do the research that has to be done (the
aerospace corporations are still going to do well by helping
research and not ny crippling it). 24. I would like to see the
search for life continue--astrobiology, etc. I also believe it is
important to have missions to Europa and Titan. 25. NASA needs to
perform a more cohesive plan of targeted exploration with low cost
missions. It can not afford to do large flagship missions at this
time without additional line-item funding by Congress. NASA needs
to learn to live within its budget. 26. The discovery line
frequency is protected by OMB, so I'm not confident the options in
the survey are relevant. I believe it demonstrable that flagship
missions return much more science per dollar than the smaller
missions - principally through more cooperative measurements, less
launch vehicle, administrative costs and spacecraft costs per
science investigation, and that they provide higher science
community support (the R&A program has had to pick up a lot of
what voyager used to support). The drawback is the creation of
larger feifdoms. In all cases, the R&A program is critical to
validating the science justification that NASA seems to require,
even for the space station and ventures to the moon. 27.
Historically, NASA has solved it's science budget crises by
descoping Flagship missions (e.g. CRAF, Cassini descopes, Hubble
descopes). This is the right course of action. The small missions
are NECESSARY to maintain the scientific workforce - new
generations of scientists and engineers cut their teeth on small
missions, rockets, etc. 28. There is a bias against universities in
flagship missions. The only benefits are during the data phase. 29.
Small and intermediate scale missions have better chance of funding
on intermediate time scales as events, opportunities change and,
possibly, other funding resources evolve. The long range Flagship
missions must hold a high priority for only a broadly encompassing
national agency such as NASA can ever expect to carry out such
missions. However, these plans must be founded in the knowledge to
be gleaned from the current vigorous maximization of knowledge from
current successful ongoing and completed missions. 30. In a world
of unlimited resources, flagship missions would be fine, but, in
the real world, they drain vital resources from important aspects
of NASA's mission. Ironically, without sufficient funding of R and
A to help task them, flagship missions become hollow, random
adventures. If flagship missions are to be pursued, funding should
come from independent earmarks. 31. Clear priorities are
exploration/sensing missions to locales which are unique and
present the biggest challenges to current understanding. Thus,
Europa, Enceladus, and Mars (in that order) should be top of the
agenda. None of this should be at the expense of the core R&A
programs. In fact the R&A programs should be grown - it is here
that the scientific community builds the foundations for all
exploration, and the basis for its planning, implemention and
interpretation of results. You cannot do one without the other, and
you cannot kick start R&A on a 'as needed' basis, it just
doesn't work that way - it has to be there at all times. It is a
misconception in some circles that exploration drives R&A, that
is simply not true, without R&A you don't know what you should
be exploring next, nor are you prepared for the unexpected. It is
far more cost effective to have robust R&A in place first. 32.
Flagship missions have a history of consuming larger amounts of
time and money that intended (overruns and delays). THe progress of
the research area as a whole is severely affected when limited
funding combined with cost overrruns compromises the underlying
research activities which constitute the lifeblood of the science
and science community. 33. Simple Europa orbiter done as a New
Frontiers mission not as a Flagship Mission. The JPL approach to
Flagship Missions is too expensive. 34. The flagship misssions are
generally of limited benefit for the important science questions.
Science before flash and dash.. How many knowledgeable people
really think manned space missions should be of high priority? Look
35. The newly robust European planetary exploration programs are
attracting young scientists in strength. The US planetary science
community is aging rapidly, in part because of emphasis on
infrequent expensive missions. 36. The flagship missions are
threatening the rest of science. Unless there is a clear new budget
line provided by Congress, they should be scrapped. The
cost-benefit of R&A far outweights the benefit of Flagship
missions. Unfortunately, the Flagship missions are easy to sell to
Congress and NASA HQ because they are so visible, and it makes the
decision makers look good. 37. Since new data is the single most
important aspect to new discoveries, and keeping our research
community vital we must have more frequent opportunities. Let us
build excitement in the public and interest in congress with new
discoveries and that will give us the opportunity for budget
enhancements to allow us a flagship mission. 38. The most
astrobiologically interesting and potentially habitable
environments occur on the satellites of the outer solar system.
Missions to these satellites are expensive, but the scientific
payoff is potentially huge. We need to commit to keeping at least
one mission at a time running to the satellites of the outer solar
system to explore these unique and exciting environments. 39. We
should pursue broad exploration of the solar system and not limit
ourselves to the moon and Mars. Flagship missions return
synergistic science that can be analyzed for a decade or more. They
are cost-effective and the science return is greatly enhanced with
a large cross-disciplinary payload. 40. Flagship mission outweigh
less demanding projects. They do not come without sacrifice 41.
Despite the whims of the current administration, planetary
exploration should be balanced so as to included outer-solar system
exploration as well as terrestrial planets. The high priority for
Europa, developed by consensus in the planetary community, should
be restored. 42. The program really needs a balance of mission
sizes. We tried smaller, faster, cheaper and it didn't work. We DO
need flagship missions like Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini along
with a robust R&A program and a mix of smaller missions. Saying
we'll give up flagships to save smaller programs is not the correct
fix to our problem, unless the flagship missions of concern are
manned missions to the Moon and Mars....