The Phoenix lander has begun relaying images from its landing site in the North Polar region of Mars. This is exciting stuff! So many Mars missions have failed, one way or another, that there's an added sense of accomplishment on top of the fact that we are currently looking at images from ANOTHER! FREAKING! PLANET!
All this for the low, low cost of $420,000,000. What's that, you say? $420,000,000 is a lot of money? Nonsense!
Conservative estimates put the cost of George Bush's Discretionary War at twenty million dollars an hour. So the cost of this mission amounts to
twenty-one hours of the "War On Terror."
We spend more money each day on war than we did on this entire freaking mission.So, yes. $420,000,000? Totally, totally worth it.
ANOTHER! FREAKING! PLANET!Also see:
NASA's Phoenix Mission pageUniversity of Arizona's Phoenix Mars Mission pagePhil Plait's Bad Astronomy-
First light pictures from Phoenix-
Phoenix has landed!The Planetary Society WeblogTitle reference: Paraphrase from Dave Chappelle's "Black Bush" skit.
YAY! Last I heard it hadn't landed yet. Glad it made it ok and can't wait for the data it will send back. :-)
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing liking watching a lot of geeks at the JPL jumping up and down like the football team that just won the state championship. The first pictures are breathtaking. They can spend my money on this kind of stuff any time.
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