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With economics, I think we have to be careful when questioning the financial efficiency of organisations like NASA, Universities, research, and the like. Some

With economics, I think we have to be careful when questioning the financial efficiency of organisations like NASA, Universities, research, and the like. Some of these things should be societal cost centers. The question for me therefore, based on your comment, is whether Europa Clipper’s expense can be justified because it is funding the current generation of custom space vehicle and mission experts, keeping alive their traditions and skills for the next generation. The alternative view is that it’s a waste of money to continuously support the careers of what are possibly the spaceship equivalents of wheelwrights, stable masters, and saddlers.

Teever 2y ago
I believe that it absolutely can be justified for precisely the reason you state -- it keeps the experts trained so that they can as a minimum produce things like Europa Clipper. But to me that's just keeping their expertise and the potential that it offers on life support. Having the technology and infrastructure to produce the things that they are experts at producing but in an unprecedented scale is what we need if we want them to reach their full potential. It allows them to more rapidly iterate over design ideas by seeing what works and what doesn't. It also allows cheaper destructive testing to work out the bugs instead of waiting a decade to find out if they just wasted billions of dollars and centuries of man years with intrinsically flawed designs. And ultimately it allows us to build modular self-assembling spacecraft on a scale that we've only dreamed of allowing them to practice their trades in new ways that will unlock new science and knowledge for the human race.
pixl97 2y ago
With cheap and commonly launched rockets like starship we'll also be able to launch many more cheap test platforms that won't need billion dollar budgets. Take the antenna on this thing, they get one chance to deply it correctly. But now imagine launching a test antenna project where for a few million you can make sure they work before you put them on a more expensive probe.

Teever 2y ago

I believe that it absolutely can be justified for precisely the reason you state -- it keeps the experts trained so that they can as a minimum produce things like Europa Clipper. But to me that's just keeping their expertise and the potential that it offers on life support. Having the technology and infrastructure to produce the things that they are experts at producing but in an unprecedented scale is what we need if we want them to reach their full potential. It allows them to more rapidly iterate over design ideas by seeing what works and what doesn't. It also allows cheaper destructive testing to work out the bugs instead of waiting a decade to find out if they just wasted billions of dollars and centuries of man years with intrinsically flawed designs. And ultimately it allows us to build modular self-assembling spacecraft on a scale that we've only dreamed of allowing them to practice their trades in new ways that will unlock new science and knowledge for the human race.

pixl97 2y ago

With cheap and commonly launched rockets like starship we'll also be able to launch many more cheap test platforms that won't need billion dollar budgets. Take the antenna on this thing, they get one chance to deply it correctly. But now imagine launching a test antenna project where for a few million you can make sure they work before you put them on a more expensive probe.