[Manabu-eo]

Went searching for the "various reasons". Found this:

> Falcon Heavy rocket, having three launches under its belt, has proven more powerful than originally anticipated. Previously, it was thought that launching Europa Clipper on a Falcon Heavy would require a “kick” stage — essentially a small booster attached to the top of the rocket. The Falcon Heavy’s impressive performance has made that unnecessary. Moreover, mission designers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory have found a path to Jupiter called a MEGA trajectory: after launch on a Falcon Heavy, Europa Clipper would fly to Mars for a gravity assist, and then return to Earth for another, and then on to the Jovian system. (The mission previously believed that the rocket would necessitate a Venus gravity assist, which would require special thermal protection for the spacecraft.)

> The window for a MEGA launch opens in 2024 and would take only three years longer than an SLS flight. A Falcon Heavy expendable launch is about $150 million. A single SLS launch is now estimated to cost $2 billion.

Source: https://www.supercluster.com/editorial/europa-clipper-inches...