LISA won’t go away, it’s too important to science and our future. It will just go elsewhere; to other countries and private contractors, (maybe even American ones, but that’s probably too much to hope for).

I hope all you extremely wealthy Americans are thoroughly enjoying those beautiful homes, private jets, fancy cars, massages, gourmet meals and other perks that the Bush tax cuts and a total lack of fiscal restraint and regulatory oversight have helped to finance.

I’ve lost all respect for you.

We are going through a temporary financial problem. Most likely. It’s not like the world hasn’t faced problems before and considerable numbers of those were far, far worse than now. All we have to do is exile all the irresponsible financial types and hope there are more than a dozen left to keep the system running (hah!).

If LISA has merit it will be back, though perhaps in a different form.

Meanwhile I maintain that proven successful and productive projects are what need to be protected and nurtured at this time. Bleeding edge projects with a 50-95% chance of failing are a waste of time and political capital during a financial pinch. Especially if they are expensive to begin with and very likely to overrun their initial budgets. By a lot!

The headline of this blog entry significantly exaggerates what is going on. The real facts of what happens next are here: http://lisa.nasa.gov/

I was arrested and put on trial for child molestation. (Los Angeles County).

Regardless, I ‘am still going forward.

Yes it would be unservicable, but, we know many of the bugs, we could put it on a Delta 4 heavy, and
let it do Long look missions, which would be relatively easy. This spacecraft could be built for 2-3 hundred million and flown and operated for no more then $500Million. Sitting in GEO, it could talk to a dedicated ground station so it wouldn’t need TDRSS time and it wouldn’t need heavy comms management.

With that kind of Stare Time it could work IR, UV and Deep Field and hunt for planetary signal.

This would leave money for LISA

You are completely wrong!!!

The problem is not that there is not enough money available for food, providing jobs and other important things the ordinary citizens need to improve their lives AND cool science.
The real problem is the addiction of the US governement to playing war games around the world which sucks all of the resources in like a big fat blackhole growing even bigger and fatter!
Just cut the defense budget to an appropriate size; this will lead to an acceptable solution of all financal problems of the nation the ordinary citizens AND scientist can live with!

“Wildly productive of what? Breathless press releases announcing the discovery of yet another ball of gas or piece of rock? In fact, extrasolar planet “research” has about as much credibility as searches for a cure for cancer.”

I just want to add my skepticism about extrasolar planet detection. This is, in general, a very good thing, and research is always good. But the holy grail, which is detection of an Earth-like planet, is somewhat of a yawner. Why? Well, because I’d be *absolutely dumfounded* if one didn’t exist. Given the enormous number of larger planets already found in a wide range of orbits, it’s a little hard to conceive that smaller chunks aren’t around in habitable zones. It’s nice to find one, but it has the smell of flag-planting rather than science. LISA would probe entirely new science directions and tell us things that are really new, instead of just pointing at things that we really wouldn’t be that surprised to find. I’m after surprises, rather than checking off boxes. Yes, such a discovery would get you an above-the-fold news article, but then where are you after that?

There are a wide range of things that we’d be absolutely dumfounded about if they didn’t exist, and while chasing them down offers some sense of relief, one has to do some simple prioritization. Does anyone, in their wildest dreams, believe that Earth-like extrasolar planets DON’T exist?

I guess if you find one, that’s an obvious target for searches for life, but our knowledge about the formation of life is so incomplete, it’s somewhat presumptuous to say that such targets should be restricted to Earth-like masses in habitable zones around middling-mass main sequence stars.

What am I missing here?