Comment Re:Happy and sad news (Score 1) 52
Trash?
Why, because you don't agree with scientific exploration? It's a real world proof of concept and will give a real basis to build upon this technology and technique. Besides, those 3 cubesats in it are more than just com systems, though the data from even that has some value. As far as satellites and probes go, this is small and cheap, so it's bang for the buck is better than most.
"bureaucrats" ...
You mean the old sods that can't figure out the value of anything other than bribes, err, campaign contributions, and pork, err, vote buying by spending money on local though dubious projects? Yeah, that means nothing. In case you haven't noticed, our current crop of politicians are lucky they can read.
not a meaningful "experiment"
Great, just tell me what the actual acceleration it would achieve is, and what all the data it's other sensors (whatever those will be) will send back, and I'll accept that statement of yours. You can't? Well of course not, that's why we do these kinds of things. We can make mathematical models and analyze those all we want, but until we get realworld data, we just don't know if there's anything else out there to mess with the results. Did you know there has been anomalous thrust on the pioneer and voyager probes? Funny how we would have no idea something like that could happen until we actually sent those probes for real. By the way, they are still studying that data, and they think they've figured that mystery out, but it's not up to the whole seven sigmas thing yet.
NASA does not waste its limited budget
I'm glad you recognize NASAs budget limitations and understand that at the current funding levels and lack of appropriate launch vehicles they can't even keep up with their current orbital responsibilities. You do know that our network of both communication, weather, and GPS satellites is in poor repair and greatly in need of new satellites? Well it's true.
Are you worried that all this research and exploration of space has no apparent benefit to us? Well let's put it this way, it has been reported that less than 2 measly centuries ago, early pioneers of electricity were ask of what use electricity had. At that time, they just didn't know. These days, you probably can't imagine living without it.
Why, because you don't agree with scientific exploration? It's a real world proof of concept and will give a real basis to build upon this technology and technique. Besides, those 3 cubesats in it are more than just com systems, though the data from even that has some value. As far as satellites and probes go, this is small and cheap, so it's bang for the buck is better than most.
"bureaucrats"
You mean the old sods that can't figure out the value of anything other than bribes, err, campaign contributions, and pork, err, vote buying by spending money on local though dubious projects? Yeah, that means nothing. In case you haven't noticed, our current crop of politicians are lucky they can read.
not a meaningful "experiment"
Great, just tell me what the actual acceleration it would achieve is, and what all the data it's other sensors (whatever those will be) will send back, and I'll accept that statement of yours. You can't? Well of course not, that's why we do these kinds of things. We can make mathematical models and analyze those all we want, but until we get realworld data, we just don't know if there's anything else out there to mess with the results. Did you know there has been anomalous thrust on the pioneer and voyager probes? Funny how we would have no idea something like that could happen until we actually sent those probes for real. By the way, they are still studying that data, and they think they've figured that mystery out, but it's not up to the whole seven sigmas thing yet.
NASA does not waste its limited budget
I'm glad you recognize NASAs budget limitations and understand that at the current funding levels and lack of appropriate launch vehicles they can't even keep up with their current orbital responsibilities. You do know that our network of both communication, weather, and GPS satellites is in poor repair and greatly in need of new satellites? Well it's true.
Are you worried that all this research and exploration of space has no apparent benefit to us? Well let's put it this way, it has been reported that less than 2 measly centuries ago, early pioneers of electricity were ask of what use electricity had. At that time, they just didn't know. These days, you probably can't imagine living without it.