And we don't have the plutonium for the power anymore due to nuclear arms limitations. And investing a 30 year career into one mission is much to ask of a scientist. And if you don't make the mission an international treaty with concrete spending and mission statements, the congress 10 years out will cut your mission funding. And and and... sigh, It can be done if we have the will. But that is the case in most things, is it not? Also that Hauyabusa mission is a study is disaster engineering. Everything that could go wrong at some point did, yet they still were able to hit the earth's atmosphere and land in Australia, albeit a bit later than planned. This is the mission that the idea of "Never give up! Never Surrender!" was a real battle cry. And now they are trying to rescue the Venus orbiter with seat of the pants engineering as well. I feel bad that JAXA has had a string of bad luck, but watching them recover has been amazing.
Well, you need someone like Alan Stern. He invested his whole career into New Horizons and he is pretty much the only reason why it happened and became the success that it is and has been so far. You know, his son Jordan is about to start grad school... Unfortunately I don't think that he's up for following in his father's footsteps. He's a math major in undergrad rather than anything astronomy related. Understandable that he wanted the chance to prove himself on his own rather than live in his father's shadow. But my point is that we need someone with that kind of drive and determination to get a mission through. The type of person where no matter what happens they keep trying until they finish the job. Maybe whoever was in charge of the Hayabusa?