The Planetary Society has issued a call to action, for people to contact House Science Committee Chairman Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) to demand that NASA not cut their 2006 spending on science priorities like Europa before their 2007 budget has even taken effect; and to demand that they reconsider their priorities in the 2007 budget. Go to our Space Advocacy page for more on how to participate in this campaign. Please participate!

--Emily

Done. I redid most of the letter before sending it...something about sending form letters that I just don't like.
I'm amazed that they're trying to cancel the Europa mission. Isn't Europa the only other body we know of that has a significant amount of liquid water? (Or at least, damn strong evidence of it.)
And taking funding away from projects already promised funding by Congress? Well, promises and the current administration in the US....they just don't go together.

Retire the shuttle fleet (or heck, just one of the things), and auction off some of the parts on eBay. It could be great PR - Own your own piece of the shuttle - and it'll bring in money for the rest of the budget. Heck with selling small pieces of the ceramic tiles - sell them whole. It'll be the new Pokemon - collect them all!

What's TPS's advice for non-American-tax-payers - what can us foreigners do? (apart from bitch and moan about it)

Doug

For this particular call to action, there is not much that non-U.S.-taxpayers can do. There is no harm in participating in the email campaign, but of course in a discussion about the U.S. budget the reps rightfully don't really care what anybody but their constituents thinks. Other calls to action are more international in scope, but this one is pretty much for people to say "you're spending my tax dollars on the wrong things."

--Emily

I've been a TPS member since, I believe, late 1989 or early 1990; therefore, forgive me for asking what might turn out to be a rather naive question. Out of curiosity, and also because I haven't really paid that close attention, does TPS directly lobby non-U.S. governments for funding increases for their respective space science programs? I assume that there are not a few non-U.S. TPS members, so I was wondering if TPS, say, organized letter and/or e-mail writing campaigns to, for example, the Russian Parliament, EU ministers, CNES, ASI, etc.

Message sent from this US Tax payer.

And also from this one.

Of course, I edited the pre-packaged message a little -- especially since "program" was mis-spelled "porgram" at one point in it.

-the other Doug

I would not worry about spelling, it's well known politicians can't spell

It's still worthwhile ensuring that the politicos don't get the idea that there's a demand for an expanded space pogrom... ...we got one of those.

Bob Shaw

Yikes -- a perennial problem -- I'll get on that.

Also, Alex, I'm looking for an answer for your question.

--Emily

Thanks, Emily. I was just curious.

BTW, the February 16, 2006, issue of Nature has a couple of related items:

Excerpt from:

Editorial
NASA in reverse
Nature 439, 764 (2006).
doi:10.1038/439764a

[...]

"But the Hansen debacle is just one element of the increasingly adversarial relationship that is developing between NASA and the research community. The sour mood was apparent at last month's American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington DC, when NASA's science chief Mary Cleave told assembled scientists that her most important 'stakeholders' were the White House and Congress. Cleave's real (if unintentional) message was clear: don't expect NASA to advocate research, as we work for other interests.

"Scientists were also dismayed at how fast NASA administrator Mike Griffin reneged on a promise made last autumn not to take 'one thin dime' from space science to address the budget problems of the space shuttle and the space station. At his budget news conference on 6 February, Griffin confessed to doing just that, shifting $2 billion over five years from research to the astronaut programme.

"The cuts to science were deep, and they were decided behind closed doors. Take the research and analysis grants that fund the basic intellectual work underlying NASA's space missions. Previous NASA administrators, recognizing that many space scientists rely on these grants to stay in business, kept the grant programme healthy. But the new budget slashes research grants by 15–25%, and by even more in areas such as astrobiology. And NASA is yet to give details of how deep the cuts actually are."

Excerpt from

News
US space scientists rage over axed projects
Tony Reichhardt
Nature 439, 768-769 (2006).
doi:10.1038/439768a

[...]

"Planetary scientist Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington says the cuts would devastate US space science — just as physics was jolted when the Superconducting Super Collider was cancelled in 1993, after $2 billion had been spent on it. 'High energy physics never quite recovered from that.'

"Scientists appreciate that NASA's administrator, Mike Griffin, is struggling to balance his books. Griffin explained during the budget press conference that the science cuts were necessary to pay for shuttle flights required to complete the International Space Station. 'It's what we needed to do,' he said regretfully.

"But Jonathan Lunine, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, Tucson, sums up the view of many when he says he finds it 'puzzling and frustrating' that NASA would divert money from science, widely considered its most productive enterprise, to keep the aged space shuttles flying. 'It seems that NASA is trying to capitalize on its failures rather than its successes,' says Lunine.

[...]

"There is fury not just at the size of the cuts, but at how they were decided and announced to the science community. Heidi Hammel, a planetary researcher with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, says that NASA's advisory council was not operating during much of last year and so 'there was absolutely no way to know how these decisions had been made. It's sort of like a black hole over there.'"

I got this answer from Lou Friedman (our esteemed Executive Director):

Thanks for taking the time to track down a response, Emily. Also, please pass along my thanks to Lou Friedman for the reply.

I listened to the recent Planetary Radio interview of Lou Friedman and Bruce Murray regarding NASA's budget plans. Given Murray's experiences as JPL Director, when the Shuttle program threatened unmanned space projects (e.g., Galileo), I was wondering if Murray, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, thought the current situation was a case of "déjà vu all over again."

We'll have a chance to see how effective the combined protest efforts of the Planetary Society, scientific community and public regarding NASA's budget request have been when Griffin and Shana Dale face the House Science Committee tomorrow at 10 am EST (3 pm GMT). The session is scheduled for 2 hours, and will be on NASA TV.

The representatives will say, "Why did you cut science so much?"
Griffin will say, "Because we need the money for Shuttle and Station"
Reps will say, "Why not keep the science and cut the budget for Shuttle?"
Griffin will say, "Because we can't delay Shuttle, or save money flying fewer missions. But we can delay the science."

What happens next is the interesting part. I'm hoping some of the 30% increase going to Exploration will go back to Science. It really doesn't cost much to keep SIM and TPF ticking over, and start work on EO.

Expect also a lot of complaints about cuts to aeronautics.

All the complaints about shuttles taking money from space science and grumbles about how there would be more for science if only Griffin would retire a shuttle strike me as naive. NASA's new mandate to send people to the Moon & Mars is also consuming money. Why not cut that back instead, or delay its schedule?

The real problem is that NASA is underfunded for what it wants/needs/has to be able to do. The shortage of money for space science is merely a symptom of that. These sort of shortages are not new and the present shortages are not likely to be the last. (Indeed, I cannot help thinking that this present situation is partly an inevitable consequence of the generous tax cuts Bush persuaded Congress to make a few years back. If you cut back the amount of money a government has available to spend then inevitably there will be less in the kitty to spend.)

What we should be hearing are calls for NASA to be given more money in general. Trying to take money from one NASA pot to give to another is merely a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Manned moon missions and manned Mars missions are going to be even more expensive even if the CEV itself is cheaper than the shuttle. What happens a decade from now when inevitably the budget cutters strike again? The shuttle will no longer be around to act as whipping boy. Will we instead be hearing calls from this board for fewer manned missions to the moon and/or delays in the manned Mars program, not to mention complaints about what a bottomless pit the CEV is and how we ought to have less of them to free up funding so they can start planning for that nice Triton orbiter everyone is talking about?

======
Stephen

There is a good summary of the overall NASA budget situation, produced by the House Science Comittee staff, at spaceref.com.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19645

To give him credit, that's exactly what Griffin tried to do last year. In an appearance before a Congressional committee, he said that he cannot accomplish everything on NASA's plate without significant funding increases.

I'm assuming that the White House changed the message they gave to Griffin, at first telling him that VSE would get the political support to get funded independently of the unmanned side. But the new Bush budget proposal shows that the White House hasn't kept its word -- instead of providing the ramp-up funding levels needed to begin the VSE development, Griffin is now being told to do exactly what he told Congress last year he cannot do: maintain both sides of the house, with the necessarily rising VSE development costs, on a fixed budget.

I would have to think that, if Griffin was telling that to Congress, he was also telling it to the White House. So, all I can say is, it ain't Griffin's fault he had to change his tune.

Let's all hope Congress can bring themselves to give NASA the money it needs to accomplish *everything* it's been tasked to do. In spite of the Administration's inability to try and do so.

-the other Doug

Well, I won't. There are, lest we forget, lots of other uses for that money, and -- at the risk of harping yet again on the subject -- I can think of a lot more morally (and strategically) justifiable than a bloated manned-spaceflight effort, or for that matter an oversized unmanned space program. But then, I'll go so far as to say that NASA should be dissolved and its functions redistributed among other, more appropriate government agencies -- which is what would have happened from the start had it not been for the historical freak of the Moon Race.

"[F]rom the start"?

1. NASA was formed in 1958 back in the days of Eisenhower. It had thus been operating for several years before Kennedy's famous announcement which led to "the historical freak of the Moon Race".
2. Before NASA was invented America had not one space program but three: one run by the Army, one run by the Navy, & one run by the Air Force. Each had their own rockets, probes, launch sites, bureaucracies, and boffins. That had the potential--in the fullness of time--to lead to three manned space programs and three unmanned ones, much as the army to this day buys and runs its own helicopters and the navy operates its own (carrier-borne) jets--despite the existence of the air force.

Regarding your comments about disbanding NASA...

Are you proposing a return to the days of multiple space programs or "merely" the fragmentation of a single American space program (or at least its space effort)? Eg one agency launches rockets, another operates space probes, a third designs and builds the bits and pieces that go into space probes, a fourth picks and trains astronauts, a fifth operates the DSN, etc etc.

And what are these "more appropriate government agencies" anyway? You presumably mean pre-existing agencies like the US military & the FAA.

As for the "bloated" or "oversized" remarks...

Manned spaceflight was not and is not ever going to be cheap. Trying to do it on the cheap is merely a recipe:

1. For more Challengers and Columbia's; and/or
2. To stay in LEO. (Going beyond LEO is hardly going to be cheaper.)

Similar things might be said of claims for America's unmanned program being "oversized". If you want to explore (say) Europa at the same time as you're sending probes off to Mars & the Moon, putting research satellites around Earth, and space telescopes in orbit, then of course you're going to be running a sizeable unmanned space program. If you want landers as well as flybys, and rovers & sample return missions as well as simple fixed landers, you are talking about expensive missions which have the potential to either gobble up a budget or inflate one.

In short, do your comments amount to a suggestion that America is being overly ambitious and should cut back on what it is doing with its space program? (Disbanding NASA and farming out its functions to other agencies could be interpreted in the same fashion. Instead of a single agency with space travel & exploration as its primary rationale you would seem to prefer America's space exploration be handled by a variety of agencies each with own (possibly conflicting) priorities; and where space travel & exploration, or providing support for the same, may in any case be one of a number of functions they are required to perform, and not necessarily at the top of their "to-do" lists.)

======
Stephen

It might not be an entirely popular viewpoint here, but I do oppose the manned moon mission, and moreso the one to Mars. If just getting people to the moon is this expensive, getting to Mars could make the Iraq war look cheap.
Some day, yes, we'll land people on Mars. I just don't think that now is the time to get started on that particular goal.

From Bob Park's latest What's New newsletter:

"Bush asked for another $72 BILLION for the war on terror and $20 BILLION for Katrina relief."

Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org

Good question. The cynically-delayed ramp up in Moon/Mars costs is a bomb that will go off, but we can only speculate as to how the world will look after the explosion.

The simple answer is that we will not send people to Mars on anything resembling the proposed timeline. On the other hand, a measured return to the Moon is at least conceivable if it were given the SS/ISS budget and then some.

In the classic film "Paths of Glory", a colonel orders infantry and artillery to undertake a suicidally impossible assault during World War I. As soon as the order is given, the failure of the assault is assured. The only thing to watch is how things proceed during and after the failure. This manned Mars business is the same deal, minus all the immediate bloodshed.

If robotic exploration is put in the behemoth's path, it could be entirely gutted. At least, it cannot compare in size to the shortfalls the behemoth will create.

One of the nicer ways this could fail would be to have people return to the Moon at enough of a "little at a time" approach that this goal could be met, the successes could distract us from the Mars goal, and robotic exploration could continue its up-and-down life cycle.

JIMO died in a nice way: Before much of the money (and organizational misdirection) had been devoted to it. That's how bad ideas should die. (Well, even sooner, but that's overly optimistic.)

ISS is dying in the worst way: Taxing more resources than any of us could even estimate (esp. in opportunity cost). It's even a major resource drain when it is clear that its farcical goals will be discarded.

What we have to hope for is that the Mars mistake dies like JIMO and not like ISS. If the latter, we'll get to the year 2030 with some huge not-useful-for-anything infrastructure having blanked the organizational priorities before it dies under its own weight like a whale in a parking lot.

The fact that Shuttle and ISS are so big that Congress is reluctant to cancel them despite their wastefulness reminds me of what Rep. Spark Matsunaga (D-HI) said in 1970 about Lockheed's ultimately successful demand that the federal government bail it out: "It reminds me of a dinosaur that wanders into your yard and says, 'Feed me, or else I'll die -- and then what are you going to do with 40 tons of dead, stinking dinosaur in your front yard?' "

I have sat through budgets sessions, and gasp when my manager has ranked a sacred cow much lower than less important projects. His strategy is simple: We will get money for these other projects, if I tell corporate everything above the sacred cow is more important than this sacred cow that you wouldn't dare cut.

Usually it works, but not always. I wonder if this is not what is happening to some extent, with Griffiths knowing full-well congress will kick in more money for science.

Another possibility is that the W is punishing scientists for being godless heathens.

-- NASA Decides to Reverse Cuts to Astrobiology
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1106

NASA has decided to reverse (at least in part) its decision to drastically cut funding for Astrobiology.
Details have not yet been released - but will be discussed this evening at the Astrobiology Science
Conference in Washington, DC.

Mar. 27, 2006 | 11:28 PST | 19:28 UTC
Dawn has been reinstated!Permalink: http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000509/


Way to go, Emily

What of any plans for Europa missions? Are they included in this restored budget?

"He then said that based on input he had been receiving that it was 'clear that we should money back [into Astrobiology]" and that "we have decided to put money back - and we will be doing that as soon as we can.'"

Input, like from most of the UMSF forum perhaps?

Clearly there was no logic to these science cuts in the first place. reason may yet prevail

Pehaps a restoration of the top priority Europa orbiter will follow

We should be so lucky.

It's the Earth, Stupid
NASA's new budget blows it.
By Gregg Easterbrook
Slate.com
Posted Wednesday, March 29, 2006, at 12:27 PM ET

Easterbrook was singing a similar tune back in his 1991 "New Republic" summary -- actually set up like an encyclopedia, in alphabetical order -- of "what's wrong with NASA". Readers of this blog will immediately notice some howlers he's committed in this new article, but the most important things he says are correct. More comments later.

Yeah, I just slogged through it myself. Typical Easterbrook piece, and some of the wording in the article is, to put it charitably, very sloppy.

It's easy to jump on his factual errors (no unmanned U.S. Moon probes since Apollo; Triana would have been at an Earth-Moon Lagrange point). And there's his one really substantial error: his bizarre insistence that Solar System and extrasolar-planet missions are ALWAYS far more important than longer-range space astronomy and cosmology missions because they study things that are "reasonably close" to us and therefore "might have some effect on us".

But the fact remains that his main points -- the stupidity of Shuttle/ISS; the downright criminal stupidity of shorting space-based studies of climate and environmental changes -- are correct. And so is his argument that Bush's manned lunar program may be an even bigger boondoggle than the Station -- given the fact that any actual Moon base would certainly cost several times what ISS cost, and that the science from manned lunar exploration will be of interest solely to the extremely small flock of specialists in lunar geology (unless Moon-based helium-3 mining or solar-power station construction pans out, which is, to put it mildly, questionable without a lot of further ground-based study). If we're going to start develop manned deep-space ships to Mars or the near-Earth asteroids, we should start working directly on those and not be diverted by the Moon. Except, of course that -- as he says -- the manned program drags on owing to the desire of NASA, its contractors, and its home-district Congressmen and voters to keep bleeding off the money of other taxpayers.

I might be prepared to argue that satellites are a very cost-ineffective way to study most aspects of climate change, especially given the extreme difficulty of calibration and the relatively small effects they can see. To date, despite all the hoopla, has EOS delivered on many of its promises?

I'd be happier if the money was spent doing something about the obvious reality of climate change, rather than studying it from orbit. Not that that's likely given the current administration.

I've always heard that satellites are absolutely crucial to separate local changes from global changes in climate-change observations. Consider the fight, lasting for years now, over whether weather balloons really provide adequate data on changes in global atmospheric temperature -- or the fact that, until ERBS went up, we couldn't even answer such an obvious question as whether the current cloud cover is warming or cooling the planet. (Also note that one of the main arguments being used by the remaining skeptics is Richard Lindzen's belief that previous satellite observations of the Pacific have shown a cloud-related negative-feedback effect that he thinks will automatically choke off man-made global warming -- an argument that can only be settled in any reasonable length of time by better satellite data.)

The more data we get to nail this down, the less alibi this Administration -- or the next one -- will have for resisting the need to start doing something about it. Indeed, over the last few months, you'll note a decided softening of this Administration's rhetoric regarding its supposed doubts on the subject (even if the President himself, when torn away from his comic books, has developed an attachment to the ludicrous conspiracy theories of Michael Crichton).

..and don't forget by far the largest part of the planet is inaccesible to man, or at least not accessed by man (i.e. the oceans). Oceans store most of the energy for climate, but data coverage from ground-based observations is very sparse. If you want to have a global picture, you need satellites.

Sure, you generally hear this from people who are involved in satellite missions.

It may be that there are reasonably-priced satellite missions that can answer environmental questions. The EOS mega-system, however, really muddied the water. It's a classis big-mission/small-mission dichotomy, which in my opinion didn't weigh heavily in favor of big missions.

Not to mention the ice caps. Actually the claims about melting ice caps are rather shaky since they are almost completely based on measurements from parts of Greenland and the Antarctic Peninsula while we have very little data from East Antarctica which is the really important area. Theoretical studies seems to indicate that the East Antarctic Ice Cap is probably growing, but we don't know for sure, and satellite measuremets is the only realistic way to find out.

tty

Well, there are certainly enough smaller satellites in the "A-Train" sequence as well. (Notice that they're the ones that the Administration was trying to knife, since the funding for EOS is pretty much complete.) Frankly, if I'm going to waste any money unnecessarily on space, THIS is the best possible place to unnecessarily waste it.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/06..._nasa_tech.html

This article may deserve its own thread - it would seem to take a lot of seed money out of the universitys needed to harvest a new crop of space scientists and engineers.

Check out today's NASA Watch for a link to an excellent article from yesterday's
Washington Post. It is entitiled, "Is NASA in Outer Space? Not After a Surprise
Round of Budget Cuts." I agree wholeheartedly with the aouthor's point that Congress
needs to erect a permanent FIREWALL in NASA's budget to protect unmanned Space
Science missions. The author highlights the "deferments" of such crucial missions
as the Europa Orbiter, SIM and TPF.

In my opinion, Griffin must be prevented from setting a precedent with NASA's
FY07 budget proposal. If Congress allows Griffin to steal funds from Space Science
this time, then he, and future NASA Administrators, will be tempted to dream up
some "emergency" in manned spaceflight that "requires" them to take funds from
unmanned exploration.

-- Continued Confusion Over Astrobiology Funding by NASA
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.nl.html?id=1110



c-r-e-d-i-b-i-l-i-t-y

Odd disparity: In a Feb. 13 article ("Time to Talk"), Aviation Week says that "NASA cut about $2 billion from its five-year runout for space science". But in an April 3 article ("Setting Priorities"), AW says that "Overall, NASA's Fiscal 2007 request trims $3.1 billion from the five-year science spending plan outlined in its Fiscal 2006 budget." Which is true?

Also, an interesting Aviation Week guest editorial from the Hubble Telescope's Bruce Margon defending Flagship-class space science missions: http://www-int.stsci.edu/~margon/awst.pdf

Cpurtesy of (grrr) Keith Cowing: the Planetary Science Institute has polled 1024 planetary scientists to find out just what they want done with the money the program DOES have available right now:
http://www.psi.edu/~sykes/prioritysurvey/results.html

The results are both clear and interesting. There is very strong agreement with what Andy Dantzler told Congress: R&A funds come first, then small (Discovery and Mars Scout) missions, then medium ones (New Frontiers), with Flagship missions as a whole (at the rate one per decade) being lowest priority. BUT: there is also overwhelming enthusiasm (73%) for skipping the next 1 or 2 Discovery AOs plus the next New Frontiers AO to fly ONE near-future Flagship mission.

Obvious next question: do the scientists want that one near-future Flagship to be Europa Orbiter (as currently planned), or something else?

Bruce:

Look on the bright side - the MEPAG folk talk to *you*!

Bob Shaw

I agree with his points. There are other important factors in (outer) planetary exploration:

- Delta V: To go to Jupiter, Saturn or Neptune you need a large C3 and/or long travel times > big booster
- Delta V: To enter orbit you need to slow down a lot, to enter orbit around a moon even more > large propellant tanks > large spacecraft
- Long travel time means more redundancy and a long time before you get scientific results
- This means long science planning cycles and (together with the higher costs) long intervalls between missions
- If you have a mission every two decades or less you want to carry all instruments you have and may need

You have a bis spacecraft with lots of propellant, instruments and redundancy, something like Cassini. Orders of magnitude more productive compared to Deep Impact but less than one order of magnitude more expensive.

Flagship missions can't be replaced by smaller ones. Period. Physics is against it. ESA knows (Rosetta, Beppi Columbo).

Analyst

Which brings me to a point Emily isn't going to like -- in that "open" E-mail Bruce Betts sent her on MEPAG's April meeting, he didn't tell her a single goddamn thing that hasn't already been openly known for months. See http://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/nov-05/M...irmans_ltr1.pdf and http://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/reports/Mars_Pro..._SAG_Report.doc . The only reason I got anything before those two public reports came out is because they DID send an emissary to the simultaneous COMPLEX meeting in November, and I was there to overhear him.

I suggest that Emily and I try simultaneously to pry open this oyster and actually get some new information about the things MEPAG discussed at the April meeting and the conclusions they reached.

Bruce, I work for Bruce Betts, which sometimes gets me more insight, but sometimes less. That is, I have to pick my battles, and I've got other stuff I'm waiting on him for. Feel free to pester him for more information. A phone call will probably get more progress (i.e. he can't put off a reply to a phone call until tomorrow...and tomorrow...and tomorrow...) He's up to his neck in preparations for the upcoming ISDC meeting and is more than usually procrastinatory these days.

As for that inexplicable NASAwatch comment about "finally allowing taxpayer insight," Lou and Bruce have been going to MEPAG for years. I'll be going to both OPAG and VEXAG.

--Emily

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.nl.html?pid=20415


The power to delay is the power to destroy.


While I agree with Griffin in principle, his hand-picked advisary committee has its own agenda and bias.

I will agree that some missions just cry out for Flagship class. The Europa Orbiter is a good example. There are some things in that mission, such as measuring the tidal flexing of Europa, that simply cannot be done without going into orbit around Europa. And even with only a month in Europa orbit you can get high resolution imagary and data collection over nearly the entire surface.

However, Analyst's comments appeared to make the argument that you just can't do Outer Planets missions without going to the Flagship Class.

I doubt that this is what he meant to imply, but I would like to point out that all is not lost. I think the first two New Frontiers missions, New Horizons and JUNO, show that you can go to the Outer Planets for a lot less than Flagship costs.

Looking at the relatively conservative JUNO design, I'm not sure a 3-axis stabalized, nuclear powered, Jupiter orbiter is possible under the New Frontiers cost cap, but if it is we still could have a "Flagship-light" mission launch by the middle of the next decade. As I have argued before, we could still move forward quite a lot by a modern instrument suite flying a variation of the Galileo tour.

I'll grant you that 3-4 instruments on a New Fronteirs "Galileo 2" would not return nearly what 6-7 instruments on a Europa Orbiter would.... but a real-live New Frontiers-3 is worth a lot more than an endlessly studied, 'we hope it gets funded next-year, or the year after that', Europa Orbiter.



Mars Sample Return, anyone? Been studied since the 1980s. And studied. Designed. And then redesigned. Go-it-alone. Partner with the French. Projected for launch in mid-90s. Then projected for the 2005-2007 time period. Then mid 2010s. Latest plan is for launch in 2024.

I'll believe it when I see it.