The Cap'n of the Clueless has a long post on Galileo, orbital mechanics, chaos theory, and space science in general, that's worth reading if you have the time.

Steve romanticized JPL a little bit - here is what I wrote him:

Steven,
Nice basic article but...
Unmanned (does not equal) JPL. All the Pioneers were run out of Ames near San Francisco, the Viking landers and Mars Global Surveyor had heavy involvement from Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and the Applied Physics Lab in Baltimore has picked up a lot of the Discovery class missions, including NEAR/Shoemaker, the late, lamented CONTOUR, and the upcoming MESSENGER to Mercury mission. ASU has a huge role in Mars Odyssey, and UA have the new Mars Phoenix mission to themselves. Not to mention the masses of earth observation and astronomy missions, which tend to be run by GSFC. Indeed, one of the reasons for the Discovery program of solar system missions was to get flights out of JPL's bureaucratic clutches.
Not to rain on JPLs parade - there is a place for Battlestar Galatica missions JPL tends to create (i.e. Galileo, Cassini, and now the Mars Exploration Rovers). But the unmanned deep space program is now a *lot* healthier for the diversity it has acquired over the last few years.
Cheers,
Duncan