It’s been over seven years since this project started, but of course there can be a long road even before getting a proposal selected for funding. Not only was that funded proposal actually submitted nearly eight years ago (February 2008), proposals such as these are rarely selected on the first attempt, and GRIPS was no exception. It’s fairly common knowledge that the successful proposal was actually an updated version of an unsuccessful proposal in 2007, which had been rated very highly but deemed too expensive/ambitious for a three-year project. The proposal that eventually won had an expanded timeline of four years. (Note that this proposal did not include a full-up instrument or an Antarctic flight; we were awarded additional funding in 2012.)
What’s far less commonly known is that there was actually an even earlier GRIPS proposal in 2006. I had worked on the GRIPS concept since the beginning, but my memories of that proposal had grown extremely hazy. Feeling a bit wistful with the new year, I dug the 2006 proposal out of my archives, and was amusingly surprised by what I had forgotten.
Continue reading