>sigh.... The comedic potential is worth a hell of a lot of publicity and public interest. People take rovers driving around mars for granted these days. It

>sigh.... The comedic potential is worth a hell of a lot of publicity and public interest. People take rovers driving around mars for granted these days. It took 20yr of driving a few feet a day and accompanying monthly press releases about interesting rocks disseminated to the scientific community and then trickled down to the public. Rovers driving around mars is firmly in the status quo. When one runs out of things to do we send another. We don't stop and debate about if it's worth it. Enough memes about probing Uranus and outer planetary missions will become normalized in the public consciousness. That changes the dichotomy from "if we send a mission to <outer planet>" to "this time the mission will be to <outer planet>".