I recall seeing on a program called "Stephen Hawkings Universe" in 1997 on PBS, a sequence where an engineer was interviewed about his participation in building the spacecraft (behind him in the video apparently) for the Planck Surveyor mission (sensitive CMBE mapper). My question is why is it taking a decade to build this device? What is so complex about it? It was only like ~3 years from assembly to launch for WMAP.

I'll do some more digging on this for you when I get the time -- but the main thing to keep in mind about Planck is that it is MUCH more sensitive than WMAP. Also, Italy -- which was supposed to provide one of the two Planck instruments -- has run into serious funding problems which forced it to descope the instrument; and since Planck is supposed to be launched on the same booster as the huge "Herschel" IR telescope, the technical delays that Herschel is running into right now also naturally affect Planck's launch date.

hmmm! interesting as always!