--- In Know_Nukes@yahoogroups.com, jarofranta wrote:
> No, its not a change in design -- its a (slight) change in PR.
>
> Whereas before they couldn't even bring themselves to include
> the RTG in any of the MSL images all over NASA's web sites,
> now they do show it

They have admitted it before, in early 2004:
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/mars_science_lab_04
0211.html
http://tinyurl.com/ywva2

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The mobile lab is five times larger than the current wheeled robot
design now busily at work on Mars. That class of rover is around 400
pounds (180 kilograms). The heftier MSL could tip the scale at 1,980
pounds (900 kilograms).

What drives that weight up is the science gear MSL will tote across
the martian terrain -- 10 times the payload of a Spirit/Opportunity-
class rover.

MSL is designed to operate a full martian year, or two Earth years.

At present, Boeing Co. and Lockheed-Martin are working on competing
nuclear battery designs for the laboratory. Boeing's Canoga Park,
Calif.-based Rocketdyne Propulsion and Power unit is designing a so-
called Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG), a
more powerful version of the RTGs that powered NASA's Viking 1 and 2
Mars landers in the 1970s.

While the Multi-Mission RTG would not be as powerful as the RTGs
aboard NASA's Cassini Saturn probe, it is designed to be more
flexible, adaptable to both the orbiter and lander missions on the
space agency's drawing boards.

Given a nuclear power plant that it carries, the rover would be the
energizer bunny of Mars by going?and going?and going?for a number of
years.
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