I can't speak for the manned program, but I am loosely affiliated with a NASA unmanned mission (I'm a grad student). The major problem is lack of funding. Sure, NASA gets some money, but the competition for it is so intense that everyone suffers. Missions take decades from conception to launch and are doomed to failure as lack of money forces cost cutting that delays the mission.

The horrible thing is that the amount of money it takes to design, develop, build, launch, and operate a flagship mission over a 10-20 year period is a few billion dollars - almost nothing for the government. But that money is not available because no one outside of the scientific community cares (since reality TV or celebrity gossip is so much more interesting). And if the population doesn't care, the government won't fund it besides token support. The only reason the US is still better than any other country at exploring space is because the politics of other countries are even worse.

But no, I'm definitely not bitter that the mission I'm working on, which was conceived in the 90's and had most of its technology developed in the 2000's, may, if the government budget gods look favorably on us, launch in the 2020's. Then it'll collect the data it needs to for a few years, eventually shut down, and the whole cycle will repeat. It might even happen that the successor will launch before I die. And no, this is not the only mission that has worked like this.

Actually, yes they did. Not that I really expect anyone to read the article. But if you do, you'll find the following:

Thus, as you can see, the idea was that phytoplankton that is protected from such grazers was supposed to have grown. But it didn't, and that's why the experiment didn't produce the expected results.

From this press release this appears to have only 60 electrodes (and I assume only grayscale). This is definitely remarkable progress, but still nowhere close to achieving a bionic eye that can come even close to rivaling the real human eye.

The question they're also answering (besides how well does this work) is how well can the brain interpret simple images into more complex images that would allow someone to get by in life. That may be as interesting, if not more interesting, than the actual experiment with the device.

Not exactly. Estimates are based on worst case scenarios. What would have been the public's reaction if NASA had said that the rovers would last 1 year but they only lasted 6 months? NASA guidelines require that when something is supposed to last x months/years, then it's engineered such that it will last that long, no matter what. Specifying mission requirements is actually a tricky problem for the scientists on a mission because you want the most possible science that fits within a budget and that will last for as long as you say it will last. And usually the only way to convince NASA that something will last is if you add in backup systems. With new, expensive technology this becomes even harder.

So yes, the rovers were conservatively estimated to last 3 months. I'm sure the scientists on the mission expected that they would last longer, but 3 months was a good benchmark that provided a good amount of science for a reasonable cost. Everything else has just been icing on the cake (and in this case, a lot of icing). Personally, I think they did a great job and cannot fault them at all.

(I am a grad student working on a NASA mission and have seen a bit of how this process works)

I wish that more software would default to 587 instead of 25. For example, Thunderbird doesn't even mention the possibility of 587 as a "default" port, which really needs to be changed.

In any case, it's good to see the change to 587 become more widespread and hopefully it will eventually become the default port for sending messages (along with encryption + authentication), while 25 will be reserved exclusively for server-to-server communication.

Should it matter? In my opinion, if you're married, then it doesn't matter who makes the money, you're in it together. By that reasoning, should a parent who stays home with the children not be able to buy anything at all since they don't earn anything? Granted, I think that any major purchase or decision should be made together, and a $1k purchase is usually considered major, but one person shouldn't be begging the other for anything. That kind of relationship is not sustainable and not healthy for anyone.

Sure, digital has replaced 35mm. And yes, it's wonderful to use. But there is no way that a Canon 5D Mark II can compete with even medium format film, let alone 4x5 sheet film. Nor will a camera with the 5D's size ever be able to. Now, if they had shot the portrait on a professional medium format digital camera with 50 MP resolution (these camera's aren't that expensive anymore), that might have been nice. But there is no way that a 5D MkII will ever rival the quality of medium/large format film. And the fact that they're shooting the presidential portrait on a 35mm equivalent camera is sad, considering that it's not uncommon for portraits to be done on at least medium format.