Beauty and the budget on show in Paris
I couldn't pick a winner in a one-horse race and so with six on the track, I have no hope.
Having sat through Tuesday's "beauty contest" of possible future European space missions, I have to say my money is staying firmly in my pocket.
I said I'd report back and I've detailed all the .
They're an impressive bunch and the packed theatre at the Oceanographic Institute of Paris gave each consortium's presentation a hearty round of applause.
They're also a diverse bunch. , , , , and cover very different fields of science and you could sense the hum move around the room as different quarters took greater interest in those areas that meant more to them.
The stand-out moment, though, was when the last three slides of the day were put up on the big screen.
These contained the estimated total costs to the European Space Agency of the different mission proposals at 2010 prices. The contents of the very final slide I have reproduced on this page.
It shows four of the missions busting the 475m-euro budget ceiling that will be given to the two successful concepts to emerge from the competition.
Only the infrared telescope mission Spica comes well below the red line and that is because the larger costs of this endeavour would actually be borne by the Japanese who will provide most of the spacecraft and the launcher.
And even the other bars on the chart do not tell the whole story because these were solely costs to Esa. On most of the missions, the costs of providing instruments will be borne by national governments, not by the agency.
After a day of gorging on the wonderful scientific possibilities, the slides took a little wind out of the sails.
The immediate reaction of a number of people in the hall - and some consortium members - was that the costing estimates were overly pessimistic.
Some suspected - maybe jokingly - that a kind of "Bepi multiplier" had been used.
This refers to the that has been seen recently in Europe's proposed Mercury mission in 2014, BepiColombo. What was supposed to be a high 600m-euro mission has now become a high 900m-euro mission.
Perhaps the agency was trying to factor in the gloomiest of all scenarios, one space scientist speculated. Certainly, Esa cannot afford another episode like Bepi.
Esa's science directorate insisted, however, that the costing exercise had been detailed, realistic, and transparent.
What is for sure, the cost of these missions as they evolve will be scrutinised as never before.
Professor David Southwood, Esa's director of science and robotics, told me:
"I'm neutral; I don't mind which of the missions goes ahead. I think they're all great. But what I don't want to see go ahead is a mission which is too ambitious for what we're capable of doing right now given our budget. Something that just swallows the programme for five or six years is too much."
One other point of note. It was interesting to see the number of Brits leading the presentations.
Three of the pitches - Spica, Marco Polo and Cross-Scale - were fronted by UK scientists. Indeed, it could have been four if one speaker had not stood back to allow a European colleague to talk through the PowerPoint slides.
The strong British showing was remarked upon by a number of those in attendance.
It was an encouraging sign of the current strength of UK space science.
All that said, these are tough times and one or two in the community came up to prod a finger in my direction and talk about the likely state of future UK funding.
Esa, you might be aware, is one of those "international clubs" that has become more expensive for the British of late because of an unfavourable euro-pound exchange rate.
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