🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <7325@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
>JPL is studying a mission dubbed TAU, Thousand Astronomical Units...
>...propulsion system would be shed after fuel exhaustion, leaving the
>11,000-lb spacecraft to continue on for up to 40 more years...
>
>[Mini-editorial:  a probe with a 50-year mission will be passed by newer
>probes with better engines long before the end of its mission.  Planning
>for such long missions needs to consider in-flight obsolescence.  -- HS]

Good point.  But better engines will result, at least in part, from experience
gained by flying the current idea of "new" engines.  I also wonder if the
probe might not return some data significant for the planning of a follow-up
mission during the first few years.

Perhaps this probe could wind up as a long-term, deep space exposure experiment
when it is found by one of the later craft.  Think of how much fun it would
be to check it for dings and graffiti.


-- 
		--Craig
		...{ucbvax,sun}!pixar!good