I worked on the mission that just got cancelled, and you are absolutely wrong.
Maybe you didn't realize this when you posted, but this was a JPL mission. And it was directly due to their mismanagment that it got cancelled. The Dawn mission was being built by a contractor, not inside the fenceline. However the biggest technical problems were in the parts that JPL was providing: the ion engine. The budget overruns were primarily due to JPL management constantly changing requirements and trying to run the program like it was one of the big programs that they are used to, instead of a cheaper Discovery program. I have worked with several NASA centers and found JPL to be less focused, and much less efficient than Goddard or Marshall.
Being run by Caltech doesn't make them special, there are several government facilities that work the same way including Applied Science Laboratory and others.
And being a summer intern doesn't make you at all knowledgable about anything.
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I worked on the mission that just got cancelled, and you are absolutely wrong. Maybe you didn't realize this when you posted, but this was a JPL mission. And it was directly due to their mismanagment that it got cancelled. The Dawn mission was being built by a contractor, not inside the fenceline. However the biggest technical problems were in the parts that JPL was providing: the ion engine. The budget overruns were primarily due to JPL management constantly changing requirements and trying to run the program like it was one of the big programs that they are used to, instead of a cheaper Discovery program. I have worked with several NASA centers and found JPL to be less focused, and much less efficient than Goddard or Marshall. Being run by Caltech doesn't make them special, there are several government facilities that work the same way including Applied Science Laboratory and others. And being a summer intern doesn't make you at all knowledgable about anything.