> One of the Voyager scientists, Dr Garry Hunt, told The Register that the idea of doing a Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus-Neptune mission had never really gone away, and engineers fueled the spacecraft fully expecting to be granted an extension.

> "We knew that if you filled up to brimming point the spacecraft with all the fuel it ever needed, it'd be OK," recalled Hunt. "We did. But we never told anybody."

The mission was supposed to only do two planets even though it was known to be the only opportunity to do 4 planets in one launch. But the new Nixon Administration was not excited by a rapidly changing field of science. So the NASA administrators proposed limiting it two planets. In the next administration, they were like OK keep exploring. And sure enough the launch went on to explore four planets.

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treyfitty 2 days ago | parent [-]

I’ve been thinking a lot about a similar concept, but orthogonal application of that concept: when immediate/short-term incentives are not there, how do you reward workers in the trenches (scientists and engineers in this case) to push forward and make the best decision for science, even if it’s not the best decision for the business/entity?

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dylan604 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Isn't that kind of the default position for these types of builds? Nobody wants to be the team that built a thing that died on day 101 when the mission was designed for 100 days. Everyone wants the science to stop not because the platform stopped working but because bean counters shut it down. Everyone wants to be the team that built Curiosity long outliving its mission duration while continuing to do science. Otherwise, the bids will go to the teams that build Voyagers or Curiosity and never come to the team that builds systems that last exactly mission duration

	▲	euroderf 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Nobody wants to be the team that built a thing that died on day 101 when the mission was designed for 100 days Maybe nobody in the science world. But in the commercial world, it's the requirement so it's not a bug it's a feature.

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justinrubek 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Where does the "best decision for the business" come into play here? It's not the best decision just because the top level leadership decided it.