Posted on 11/16/2014 8:49:02 AM PST by BenLurkin
I was thirteen years old when Columbia disintegrated. Space exploration was not even a particular interest of mine at the time, but I remember exactly where I was when the news came. My dad and I were sitting in the living room of my childhood home, listening to NPR. I don’t really recall how I felt when they broke into our program with the news, but I remember well the two emotions that seemed to permeate the coverage that soon become constant: confusion and sadness. As I watched the almost surreal saga of ESA’s Philae this week, I found my mind wandering back to that day eleven years ago. That confusion rang out was hardly surprising; after all, things weren’t going right and we didn’t know why. But it was the sadness, I think, that drew my mind into the past. Many of the countless people watching Philae’s distress unfold before us weren’t merely disappointed that a decades-in-the-making experiment wasn’t going as planned. The word heartbroken kept springing to mind.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
- Dr. Frankenstien
Yet another failure of solar power. Can’t believe the geniuses that built and sent this thing forgot about “shade”. Maybe something besides batteries and solar power should have been used, like a nano-nuke plant or the like.
Why not an RTG? Those have been used on deep space probes for decades. At least one is still operating after having left the solar system.
Not to side-jack the topic, but here’s another NPR-type who anthromorphizes and sympathizes with the plight of machines, but more than likely relegates fetal “tissue mass” to the garbage bin…
Could be.
Talk about redefining the cost of doing nothing...
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