Alan is clearly incredibly pissed about what they're doing to NH and I can't blame him
and boy, the rest of the planetary community is not happy with MSR being a budget-eating monstrosity
re: new horizons:
even without another KBO flyby, there's plenty of planetary science NH can still do until it leaves the Kuiper Belt in 2028. they're wringing every last ounce of science they can get from that spacecraft, and the mission had a very positive senior review recently.
instead, NASA told them that they're not getting any more planetary funding after 2024, and they're handing it off to heliophysics, which would basically remove all funding for the existing mission science team, because helio division runs their missions differently than planetary does.
NH is the only KBO probe we've ever had, and the only one that will be in the Kuiper Belt for several decades. so by handing it off to heliophysics, they're basically taking a baseball bat to the knees of KBO science, to save an incredibly minimal amount of money in the grand scheme of things (0.15% of the planetary division budget)
NASA politics always pisses me the fuck off.
The dumbest possible things have to happen over the absolute tiniest budgets imaginable.
Every single dollar spent on NASA generates an almost incalculable return in scientific data, and yet we only send them pennies, because that return is over 10-20 year timeframes and everyone is so short-minded.
I know those "society if X" memes are overdone, but society if NASA had 1% of the Department of Defense budget might actually look like one of those. It's disgusting.
