well, if there is to be a plan b, it s either new levels of cooperation with nasa, and, of course, back in 2011, 2012, you had a huge fallout with nasa over the mars mission because they decided to go their own way. so you re either going to have to rebuild a mars relationship with nasa, or somehow you re going to have to convince people like, i don t know, elon musk and jeff bezos, to work with you to do something dramatic that they ve never done before. so, what is plan b? i m not putting it on the table because a decision has to be made by my member states. but we are preparing a proposal, together with nasa, by the way, who has helped us analysing the issues that need to be done. there are a number of technology developments that need to be done, just to recall. the mission has four main components. of course, the launch with the rocket this was meant to be a russian portion. then the transfer vehicle to come towards mars. then the lander that brings
this was meant to be a russian portion. then the transfer vehicle to come towards mars. then the lander that brings the rover down to the surface, and the rover itself, which is the hard piece, to drill into the mars surface and do all the science. so, there are four big elements. and out of those four, two, roughly, are dropping out the rocket the launch by russia, and the lander in particular. plus, in the other parts, there is some russian technology. of course, all this stops now. i ve done the series analysis, what needs to be done? what are the options? what can be done in europe, and what cannot be done in europe so easily that means it needs to be developed newly, that means from scratch, in order to do it? and, yes, yes let me just finish yes, i m working with nasa to see whether they could be a partner on this mission. but i do not want to pre empt this decision because this has yet to be made, but certainly, nasa has been extremely helpful and i really would like thi
there s no plan b. if i m not telling you the plan b, it s because we don t have a decision yet. if there is to be a plan b, it s either new levels of cooperation with nasa, and, of course, back in 2011, 2012, you had a huge fallout with nasa over the mars mission because they decided to go their own way. so you re either going to have to rebuild a mars relationship with nasa, or somehow you re going to have to convince people like, i don t know, elon musk and jeff bezos, to work with you to do something dramatic that they ve never done before. so, what is plan b? i m not putting it on the table because a decision has to be made by my member states. but we are preparing a proposal, together with nasa, by the way, who has helped us analysing the issues that need to be done. there are a number of technology developments that need to be done, just to recall. the mission has four main components. of course, the launch with the rocket this was meant to be a russian portion. then the trans