Collisionless shocks in astrophysical plasmas are important
thermalizers, converting some of the incident flow energy into thermal
energy, and non-thermalizers, partitioning that energy in unequal ways
to different particle species, sub-populations thereof, and field
components. This partition problem, or equivalently the shock equation
of state, lies at the heart of shock physics. Here we employ
systematically a framework to capture all the incident and downstream
energy fluxes at two example traversals of the Earth's bow shock by the
Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission. Here and traditionally such data has
to be augmented by information from other spacecraft, e.g., to provide
more accurate measurements of the cold solar wind beam. With some care
and fortuitous choices, the energy fluxes are constant, including
instantaneous measurements through the shock layer. The dominant
incident proton ram energy is converted primarily into downstream proton
enthalpy flux, the majority of which is actually carried by a small
fraction of suprathermal protons. Fluctuations include both real and
instrumental effects. Separating these, resolving the solar wind beam,
and other considerations point the way to a dedicated mission to solve
this energy partition problem across a full range of plasma and shock
conditions.