Incognito wrote:
The space mission to deploy a probe to Uranus, while greeted with much enthusiasm by those in the scientific and lay community alike, has been ________ not so much by the technical challenges of launching a probe into such a distant orbit as by the lack of funding
- While assumes opposition between clauses. How does not so much expresses opposition? It just confirms the second clause.
The comparing point in the second part of the sentence '' as by the lack of funding'' turns out that - the mission was
not so much hobbled and hamstrung by the technical challenge as it was by the lack of funding .