David Grinspoon

Presumably we'll have different leadership, but there will be a NASA.

There will be a science team.

We'll be operating that mission.

Somebody will be here.

And, you know, so there's the timescale of these missions.

these projects that we do in our field gives one a certain perspective.

They outlast administrations and government figures.

Now that's also a reason to be scared because things can be canceled and so forth.

So the fear that's the flip side of that is my worst case scenario is things go so wrong that by the time Clipper gets to the Jupiter system, there is nobody here operating it.

And that's that's a nightmare for me.

But I don't think that's going to happen.

It's more a source of hope because whatever happens, it's not going to be so bad.

And we will have a mission and we'll get through this and we'll keep exploring.

Well, it's going to make 50 close passes by Europa from its perch orbiting Jupiter.

Gotcha.

Yes, Europa is the place we're going to be looking at.

It's really profound.

They didn't find proteins.

They didn't find RNA.

But what they found was all of the stuff you need to make proteins and RNA, the amino acids that make proteins, the nucleotide bases that make RNA and DNA.