Reading about what kind of equipment and hardware Cassini was outfitted with back in 1997, and what kind of testing it's going to do, etc., I got to wondering what they would do differently if they were launching it today. Is there a JPL Wish List, as in, "Gee, if only we'd had *that* back in 1997 to tack onto it..."? What do the Big Brains wish they had been able to include in the Cassini's Saturn Vacation Package? Is there something they sure wish it could test for, if only it had the equipment, but they didn't have it back then?

This especially made me wonder:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/0...bit/index.html
If they had it to do all over again, what would they change (besides giving themselves an unlimited budget and Uma Thurman as Team Leader)?

Actually the technology of Cassini is actually older than 1997. Remember it takes time to design, build, and launch a spacecraft.

It sounds as if most of the decisions were made for simplicity and reliability more than cost. In particular, solid-state recorders are now standard on spacecraft - all of the ones I've worked on at least since 1992 have had them.

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The scan platform was dropped to cut cost, period. Losing it increases operational complexity but lowered the development cost.

It was dropped when the CRAF/Cassini program was scaled back with a cost cap to being just Cassini to avoid being cancelled.

If it were rebuilt today, it would use bigger FPGAs than were available back then, and the ones we can get now are certified rad-hard versus being hard enough by luck.