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The Wal-Mart lander and L2 rendezvous scenarios certainly are "extreme concepts", but the fact that such major changes to the original VSE plan are even under consideration is newsworthy and relevant to the ongoing public debate over this program.

And a document "for internal use only" is not classified secret.

The only substantive reason given for suppressing the LRA-0 study report is: "We also understand that the data was altered to support the position of the person who provided the information..."

This is a very serious charge.

This statement could mean either:

A) The results of a major engineering trade study were falsified to deceive NASA managers about the feasibility of the ESAS plan, or...

B) The results of the study were falsified specifically for the leak, in order to deceive the interested public who would then place external pressures on NASA.
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_ … ticle.html
Either one of these scenarios is unacceptable. If anyone at NASA actually was responsible for such deception, they should be immediately escorted out of the building by security guards (as happened only last week to the Assistant Administrator for Diversity and Equal Opportunity).

Without clear and publicly available evidence to support the allegation that this document was altered for some political purpose and does not accurately describe the results of the LRA-0 study, it is impossible to know the truth.

So while awaiting such evidence, I stand by my analysis and my proposed non-extreme solutions to the problems revealed in the leaked report.

Succes!

Well done!

.....
....[Question about how much fuel remains on board]
McCoy: "In fact we have quite a bit margin of fuel on board. We allocate extra fuel for a bad launch, for maneuvers on route, [and everything was nominal] so we probably have enough fuel to do the extended mission, and quite frankly I think we could do another one after that. We have enough fuel for 4 and a half to 6 years."

[Was timing of events today as expected? and was orbit as expected]
Warhaut: "We got all the announcements at the expected time. There was one moment in time where we were supposed to come out of occultation, and we had a delay of two minutes, but we did not know they [the DSN] were sweeping the signal. The overall burn was exactly as planned. [With regard to the orbit,] I ask you to wait one hour. We have now switched on the ranging signal to enable us to determine the position, so we have to hang on another half an hour or hour or so."

[Why the choice of orbit with periapsis near north pole?]
Svedhem: "One reason is we have a very elliptical orbit and we want to have a very elliptical orbit where we are very close to one hemisphere to do detailed studies of features in atmosphere and on the surface. At the same time by having a high apocenter we can have a very good global view of southern hemisphere; at apocenter we can hang for several hours."

[What is the plan for end of mission?]
McCoy: "In fact the orbit will naturally decay into Venus' atmosphere. We certainly haven't got detailed plans yet. But it would be a perfect opportunity for Europe to gain experience in aerobraking for the future."

[How has duplication of Mars Express helped, and how are the two different?]
McCoy: "We had quite an exciting start for Mars Express, which is not good news for engineers; we went into safe mode after starting. This is an example of how we have learned to adapt the lessons of Mars Express to Venus. We have learned how to tailor our safe modes to more realistic conditions. Also on Mars Express there was some question with the star tracker. We took all of these lessons to Venus Express, and we don't have these problems on Venus Express. Finally, Mars Express could operate very well in orbit; as you saw Venus Express went into orbit completely nominally. The only major difference is the communications, where we have an extra antenna, and also the thermal environment, which is hotter."

[Will this kind of twin spacecraft be done again?]
Southwood: "Venus Express has a resemblance to Mars Express, and it cost us considerably less than it would have done had we started from scratch. You get some efficiencies of scale. I would imagine we saved on the order of 100 million Euros in just running Venus Express in the slipstream of Mars Express, which in turn was run in the slipstream of Rosetta. Well, I would like it to set a precedent, but we don't have a big enough budget to go on doing missions of a similar nature. We have to go on exploring the universe, and you can't do that with missions like Venus Express and Mars Express. But we try with the next two missions that we do, Herschel and Planck. They are being built as brother and sister; there are enormous differences between the two, but there are also commonalities, so we get more bang for our Euro. That doesn't sound quite as good in European as it does in American."

[What is the timeline for the coming days?]
Warhaut: "We will this afternoon switch on all the subsystems. We will plan for windows of science opportunity already in this first 9-day orbit, which we offer on a best-effort basis, if the orbit now permits this. If it permits, we have 6 windows available to the payload, which they will be able to make observations of Venus from a large distance. We wish to reach the nominal orbit on 7 May, then there is a period of 4 weeks set aside to make sure instruments are playing well together."

[Will ESA be returning to planetary exploration?]
Southwood: "I can predict right away that my successor may be sitting in this room 7, 8, 9 years from now, because we will be landing on comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, we'll be orbiting Mercury, we'll have ExoMars in the same time scale. Don't worry, we'll be back in the planets."

[Will ESA be cooperating with NASA to go to Europa?]
Southwood: "With regard to international cooperation, we try to mix elements. We go to Mercury with the Japanese; that's a first to us, and it's a very important first. I think we will be going back into space with the Americans. I sure hope we are going to see the JWST launch, and that will be a joint European and NASA experiment. As for the big planets, the giant planets are almost like solar systems of their own. A big question though, is whether it's Europa, a more complex mission, looking at the entire Jupiter system, or whether you go back to this extraordinary body discovered recently, Enceladus, with liquid water where it has no right to be. Of course now, scientists are explaining why it is so; but that is one of the joys of scientific exploration, you learn how creative scientists are."

[If fuel is not a limiter to lifetime of spacecraft, is there something more likely to limit it?]
McCoy: "Fuel is not the only issue. For a mission like this, you size the solar arrays for leaving earth, so there is a fair amount of margin. Batteries are probably not an issue. Probably what does happen is that the thermal protection degrades with time. The satellite can get quite warm. We may have to shut down some instruments, tailor operations depending on the heat situation."

Mentioned elsewhere in the forum and included here for reference

Rumor from NASA Watch

According to reliable sources NASA's initial internal estimate of what it would cost to modify the current SRB used for Shuttle missions to serve as the first stage of the new Crew Launch Vehicle had been around $1 billion. That estimate has been revised up to around $3 billion.

that is nuts !

CLV Cost Escalation
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/ … scala.html
Editor's note: According to reliable sources NASA's initial internal estimate of what it would cost to modify the current SRB used for Shuttle missions to serve as the first stage of the new Crew Launch Vehicle had been around $1 billion. That estimate has been revised up to around $3 billion.

If this is true, it is very bad news for ESAS. The 5 segment SRB first stage was considered the least risky part of CLV development. So if the estimates for this component were out by a factor of 300% the upper stage and CEV costs must all be in doubt now. Not to mention the far more risky HLV development

NASA will take in on the order of $400Bn, perhaps more. A few tens of billions is not a big slice of this.

So it may cost a liitle more than 400 Bil or a little less, the 1.0 Trillion figure was wrong although 1/2 a trillion might not be a far off guess on the cost of VSE

Human spaceflight would get defunded, politicans making noises about how our technology isn't really ready to send humans to space except on dangerous grand-standing missions (Apollo, Shuttle, Mir) and that space science is better accomplished by robots... which will be all thats left of NASA as a space exploration entity.

In such an event, barring the invention of a space elevator or a regenerative scramjet burning spiked slush hydrogen, man will stay right here on Earth for a long, long time... China will feel no need to rush anywhere, Russia/ESA won't be able to afford to do anything, and JAXA will pretty much be relegated to probes too.

What out the other space plans, Soyuz to the Moon, Brazil, India, S.Korea and Iran advancing their rockets...., Space tourism, Private sector moves, Russia's Kliper, ESA's ATV, Oural and Soyuz from Europe's spaceport ?
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/m … 31209.html
Human Spaceflight Without NASA?
' Meanwhile, there are new political factors that go beyond votes.
China is suddenly on an aggressive path toward the Moon and Mars after launching its first man into space in October. India on Friday announced it had developed a rocket capable of putting a man on the Moon, a goal the country has set for itself.
In a black void where the U.S. government sees the laurels of Apollo, others eye rich, endless opportunity. If President Bush does not decide the future of human spaceflight, perhaps the leader of another country, or the chief of an online book-selling empire, will. '

Extract from NASA's 2007 Budget Request (5.1MB PDF]

The 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) will be a long-duration, roving science laboratory that will be provide a major leap in surface measurement technology focusing on Mars habitability. Detailed measurements will be made of element composition, elemental isotopes and abundance, mineralogy, and organic compounds to determine if Mars has, or ever had, an environment capable of supporting life.

Schedule

Initial Confirmation Review (ICR):  2nd QTR FY 2006
Critical Design Review (CDR): 4th QTR FY 2007
Start Assembly, Test, and Launch Operations (ATLO): 2nd QTR FY 2008
Launch: November 2009
End of Prime Mission: October 2012

Budget Request $ Millions

FY2005  117.5
FY2006  253.4
FY2007  347.9
FY2008  285.6
FY2009  231.0
FY2010   50.4
FY2011  41.2
                 
That makes a grand budget total of $1327 million