Cassini or Curiosity?

NASA considers where in its robotic exploration budget to cut:

This year NASA received $16.9 billion, which may sound like a lot but, once adjusted for inflation, is roughly what the agency got back in 1986. Just $1.27 billion of that budget goes into funding all robotic exploration in the solar system. And most space policy experts don’t see that number going up anytime in the near future. In 2014, NASA will put many of its robotic missions through what’s known as a senior review. Administrators will have to decide which of its missions will yield the highest scientific return and may recommend canceling some of them.
And that’s where some sad calculus comes in.
“We have two very expensive flagship missions, Cassini and Curiosity,” said NASA’s planetary science director Jim Green, speaking to one of the agency’s advisory councils on Nov. 5. “So, this particular competition we’ll have to do very carefully.”ou wouldn’t think the Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn since 2004, was in trouble. It has lately been beaming back incredible data about the planet’s rings and moons. A recent image from the mission (above) showing Earth, Venus, and Mars from Saturn was widely shared on the internet and even landed on the front page of the New York Times last week.
But NASA seems to want to focus its dwindling energy on Mars.....Most in the planetary science community would bet that in a head-to-head competition, Cassini loses. That would be a shame. Cassini has already been an incredible mission, and scientists estimate it has at least four more years of life left in it. Cassini’s operating budget is about $60 million per year while Curiosity’s runs to roughly $50 million. That’s about what the Department of Defense has budgeted for 3-D printer research and is less than half of what it’s estimated to spend maintaining its golf courses. The Cassini mission has already cost $3.26 billion to launch and operate.

You know, to come up with that $60 million, maybe we could trim back the dividend tax cut, which costs the government over $20 billion a year.  But hey, who needs science research when super rich folks need lower tax rates on unearned income than what working stiffs pay on earned income.