Jason Davis has a good rundown on it, and the implications for Europa Clipper. I don’t know how he knows this, though:
Any other rocket besides SLS—including SpaceX’s upcoming Falcon Heavy—lacks the power to blast Clipper directly from Earth to Jupiter. A conventional rocket would rely on three gravity assists from Earth and one from Venus, increasing the transit time from about 2.7 years to 7.5 years.
How does he know that? Has he run the numbers, or is he just taking NASA’s word for it? He’s also not considering the possibility of New Glenn, New Armstrong, Vulcan/ACES with a distributed launch, or BFR, all of which could be ready by 2022.
As noted in comments, making it a tech demonstrator effectively puts it on the chopping block next time it overruns. I think that NASA has to start with a clean sheet of paper how such instruments should be designed and built, in the coming age of low-cost launch and space assembly.
Replacing carbon “pollution” with light pollution. This is a much more serious problem than people realize. Most kids probably don’t even know what a dark night sky looks like.
I keep forgetting about them. It looks like they’ll be a player in suborbital soon, just not for human spaceflight. I expect I’ll see Russ and others at the suborbital research conference in Broomfield in December.
Gwynne Shotwell provides a preview. The plan is to continue to pick up the pace. Note that now she’s saying 2024 for BFR debut. That seems conservative, and more realistic.
The big deal about this is its potential for an ambulance from orbit, with its lower entry acceleration, and ability to land near a hospital. It will be a very useful capability.