| 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.... |