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NASA Pulling Out of ESA-led ExoMars Mission?
astroengine writes "It's a strange irony that to afford the expense of space exploration, international collaboration is often sought after — spreading the cost across several international partners means the biggest space missions may be accomplished. And yet in times of austerity, national budgets balk at the prospect of investing in international projects like ExoMars. Sadly, that's exactly what could be facing the ambitious ESA-led Mars rover/satellite mission if NASA's Science Mission Directorate budget is slashed in the next financial year. NASA may pull out of the project, leaving ExoMars with no rockets or a means to actually land on Mars. Could Russia help out? Possibly, but it will still lead to ESA taking on more cost than it has budgeted for."
JPL is responsible for many successful planetary robotic mission including collaborationsas happened with Cassini and MSL. JPL has executed a many highly successful missions such as Voyager and MER2 (Opportunity) while never killing anyone or blowing huge budgets. Do not confuse JPL with the manned scapeflight porkbarrel in Houston. JPL does science; Houston does hugely expensive stunts and kills people. Unfortunately NASA is run by ex-pilots and astronauts; when robotic missions are cut, which happens all the time, Houston is usually behind it. The amount of money spent (wasted) on the spacestation and the shuttle dwarf the amount of money spent on Mars missions.
Unfortunately, US space exploration policy is driven more by buzzwards and hype than it is by real science. A human mission to mars would be very expensive and would, considering we can get a lot of data from unmanned probes, have very little additional value.
US space exporation policy has always been hampered by two fundamental, and diametrically-opposed priorities. The first (and MASSIVE majority) is projects of specific strategic value to national security. The space shuttle, the ISS, the technology behind the hubble, most of the launch systems, weather satellites, GPS -- these are all developments that were purely based on national security interests. They were about keeping particularly important contractors in business, about political back scratching, testing launch hardware needed for weapons systems, detecting NBC weapons testing around the world, etc.
A *tiny* amount of the budget has been focused on pure science. International partnerships are, generally speaking, never a priority for those projects. The overhead is too high, and costs too high. Its cheaper to do it ourselves if you don't have some other political justification for the partnership. You may have contributing scientists and engineers, but you won't see billions being spent on something internationally for pure science coming out of the US.
That's the reality of space flight in the US. That's why talk about expanding the manned space program always comes up during election years, when people are standing on podiums in Houston or along the east coast in Florida. There isn't even a fraction of the budget that is needed for the programs the politicians are talking about coming out of that "non-political" budget. They know that, but the hope and promise buys votes.
You're not going to see any major progress on BIG space technology in the US until we have a real enemy the politicians can rally the public behind, and can justify hundreds of billions of dollars for national security reasons. If you want to see the US get behind space exporation, what you really want to hope for is a permanently manned Chinese base on the moon, or a space station more sophisticated (in the public's eye) than a bunch of modules bolted together.
Until that happens, its all just fantasy.