The latest news from the rumor mill: NASA will include no funding for the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) mission in its FY2006 budget proposal, effectively killing the program. For those who are following the mission (which in recent months was quietly renamed Prometheus 1), this should not be much of a surprise: there has been considerable internal and external criticism of the mission, given its giant size and stretched-out schedule. NASA plans to press ahead with space nuclear power and propulsion research under the overall Project Prometheus program, but whether this will be used in the foreseeable future for outer planets missions (versus Moon or Mars applications more closely tied to the VSE) is unclear.
If true, it’s not a surprise. While the cost could possibly be justified if amortorized over several missions (the reactor non-recurring development costs being the biggest driver), the schedule slippage beyond 2012 (originally) and then 2015 by the time of contractor award makes it a difficult program to keep sold within Congress and over several administrations. The push by O’Keefe to have DOE-NR didn’t help the schedule issue either. While highly successful in fielding nuclear powered subs/carriers safely, that record comes at the price of huge dollars and very long and stable development schedules. This can be tolerated when national security is the driving force. Civilian space science exploration doesn’t begin to rate this kind of Administration/Congressional support. I would wager an industry-led reactor development effort would be much more responsive with respect to schedule. The other nail in the coffin is the same one that plagued the last NASA-led space nuclear power program; when you try to design one “power engine” for every possible mission application, you get a bloated, inefficient, band-aid design that does none of the missions well. NASA would have been better served putting together a low technology, lower performing system targeted for a near-term application and bootstrap from there. JIMO had to be probably the most challenging mission for all systems involved given the radiation environment that makes the reactor contribution minor at best.
Gee Jeff, I wonder where you read about this first ……
To satisfy your curiosity, Mr. Cowing, my source for this report was someone familiar with the contents of the FY06 budget proposal; I was not aware of the NASA Watch report until well after I posted this.
But noting the original published source is something you don’t do, once notified, I see. Still trying to be a journalist, ef?
You know, unprofessional spitefull comments like that is what turn me off of you Keith. You are still a usefull source of information, but for me journalism died when Reagan repeeled the equal time rules. So every piece of information i have to take into context who does it serve, to attempt to discern reality. Granted in the space field i need to do it less then wider range events.
This is just a weblog with out any adverts, where people are free to comment and update tidbits like the one you did that you published first. Now Jeff doesn’t have to note it. Cause you did. But you could have done it in a much more civil manner.