Is Europa really the "highest priority" of the community?, Cleave said it was at LPSC? Options

[mcaplinger]

From Emily's LPSC blog: "Bob Pappalardo would not sit down until he got Cleave to acknowledge that Europa is the consensus highest priority of the planetary science community."

Cleave was obviously poorly prepared for this session, but I don't see that this acknowledgement is either meaningful or particularly accurate. If Europa were the "highest priority" of the PS community as a whole, then one might wonder why we were spending all this money on Mars. I could easily imagine that Europa is the highest priority of the outer planets community, but frankly I was surprised when Europa Orbiter appeared in the '07 budget (presumably the result of some serious lobbying on someone's part.) It was pretty obvious to me then that there would be no money for it, especially in the aftermath of JPL running the old EO project into the ground with cost overruns and engineering upscopes. (And JIMO is best forgotten.)

Don't get me wrong, I would love to be involved with a Europa mission (we did what I think was a good proposal design for EO) but I don't see either the money or the political support being there in the near term. I know it's frustrating, but one has to be realistic, and it might help to avoid the aura of entitlement that I perceive is building in some parts of the community (not referring to you, Bob). Of course, I am just a lowly engineer.

[Guest_JamesFox_*]

What I was thinking of myself, is pretty much a New-Frontiers class moden mini-version of Galileo: a smallish Jovian orbiter with one RTG or solar panels, designed to study the Galilean moons via sucessive flybys. With the faliure of Galileo's HGA, even a little orbiter with modern instruments could easily outstrip Galileo in the volume and quality of the data returned. It might lack charisma, but it might be the logical replacement for a Europa Orbiter that cannot be afforded.