post fugam alterius says:
Oh good grief, how can anyone work with the obstinate attitude you guys come up with here. Two search phrases: 1) “ESA budget the past 20 years,” and 2) “EU contribution to ESA operations/cost.” A science-y NASAWatch reader like yourself should find that easy peasy. As for “subsidies” (your word, not mine) the cancelled (“paused”) NASA contributions to MSR included * funding continued operations of the Perseverance Rover (collected & cached samples) * building and funding the lander to retrieve the Perseverance samples, * building and funding the ascent vehicle to launch the collected samples from the surface of Mars into orbit. * build and fund the sample return capsule that would survive entry through Earth’s atmosphere and deliver the samples to the Utah containment facility (like with the OSIRIS REx sample return mission.) The mission is dead without NASA paying for those, unless ESA wants to pick it up. Aschbacher isn’t “plotting the course”, if they want to do those fun things they gotta come up with a way to pay for them.