I went down a Voyager rabbit hole again. And I came up with a factoid that entertains me.
The original Grand Tour program was canceled in late 1971, due to congressional pressure over cost. Voyager was the cheaper mission to just Jupiter and Saturn.
Voyager and its team are incredible, and they managed to pull off the entire grand tour anyway, and then 34 years and counting more science after that.
There's a good chance Voyager might outlive the entire congress that killed the grand tour.
@danderson I recall there was open talk from early on of routing Voyager 2 to Uranus and Neptune, but since they weren't official targets, they were prioritized below Titan--the line was that if Voyager 1 failed to get close pictures of Titan, Voyager 2 would be re-routed to get it at the expense of Uranus and Neptune.
Well, Voyager 1 did get close pictures of Titan but its atmosphere was frustratingly opaque to the instruments Voyager 1 had. Still, that was enough to go ahead to the outer planets with Voyager 2.
Dave Anderson
Matt McIrvin