New Horizons continues to beam back images of Pluto and its moons, reviving US fascination with space exploration. And just how economical was this deep space adventure?
Just to put NASA's cost efficiency into context: $700 million is less than a tenth of the amount Microsoft wrote off after its takeover of Nokia. Apple could fund fifteen New Horizons missions with just the profit from its last three months. And AT&T's proposed takeover of DirecTV is close to 70 times more expensive than the humble Pluto probe. Of course, anyone that's been paying attention to celebrated astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson will know that NASA has a history of delivering outstanding return on investment ... And if you share Tyson's sense that NASA can and should receive greater funding, now is a fine time to get in touch with your own democratic representative and urge him or her to help support the next US excursion into space.
One good place to start would be to lock down funding for New Horizons beyond Pluto. The little spacecraft can be retasked to snap images and gather data of some of the most
mysterious and interesting bodies in the outer solar system: Kuiper Belt Objects. Now is the time and New Horizons is the probe: odds are we will not pass this way again for at least two or three decades.
- Kepler spies a near twin of Earth orbiting a star that's nearly a twin of our sun and its in the Goldilocks zone. And speaking of funding, wouldn't it be swell if we could've paid for something like the terrestrial planet finder? Ahh but cutting Paris Hilton's income and estate taxes was considered a far greater priority by the likes of this conservative Congress.
- It's a snake, it's a lizard, it's a snake and a lizard!
- Have you ever heard of beautiful, glistening, hair ice? Well neither have I, until now. And what mysteries it held in its alien-looking coife may have been solved.
- I guess creepy eccentric zillionaires are occasionally good for something:
You could say that the silence has been deafening. Since its beginnings more than half a century ago, the dedicated search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has failed to detect the presence of alien civilizations. But at London’s Royal Society today (20 July), Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced a shot in the arm for SETI: a US$100-million decadal project to provide the most comprehensive hunt for alien communications so far.