> One of the Voyager scientists, Dr Garry Hunt, told The Register that the idea of doing a Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus-Neptune mission had never really gone away, and engineers fueled the spacecraft fully expecting to be granted an extension.
> "We knew that if you filled up to brimming point the spacecraft with all the fuel it ever needed, it'd be OK," recalled Hunt. "We did. But we never told anybody."
The mission was supposed to only do two planets even though it was known to be the only opportunity to do 4 planets in one launch. But the new Nixon Administration was not excited by a rapidly changing field of science. So the NASA administrators proposed limiting it two planets. In the next administration, they were like OK keep exploring. And sure enough the launch went on to explore four planets.
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