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Let me quote the best bits... Uranus is NASA's target! And there's going to be a "4.2 billion flagship mission to the ice giant"!! chortle, chortle... "Uran
by verisimi 5y ago
Let me quote the best bits...
Uranus is NASA's target! And there's going to be a "4.2 billion flagship mission to the ice giant"!!
chortle, chortle...
"Uranus has not been explored up close"
"After decades in the shadow of the other planets, Uranus should become NASA’s focus of exploration"
"NASA ... will launch a $4.2 billion orbiter and atmospheric probe to Uranus"
"It was Uranus’s turn."
"Uranus also holds its own individual appeal."
"It has two sets of rings, along with a densely packed set of primordial moons and oddball objects, likely trapped comets or objects from a region beyond Neptune"
"flights through those plumes revealed abundant organic molecules, necessary to build life, along with silica and hydrogen gas, a sign that the ocean feeding the plumes probably has hydrothermal vents in its depths"
sigh....
- bamboozled 5y agoYou might be cancelled for this comment, thought it was good though :)
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago>sigh.... The comedic potential is worth a hell of a lot of publicity and public interest. People take rovers driving around mars for granted these days. It took 20yr of driving a few feet a day and accompanying monthly press releases about interesting rocks disseminated to the scientific community and then trickled down to the public. Rovers driving around mars is firmly in the status quo. When one runs out of things to do we send another. We don't stop and debate about if it's worth it. Enough memes about probing Uranus and outer planetary missions will become normalized in the public consciousness. That changes the dichotomy from "if we send a mission to <outer planet>" to "this time the mission will be to <outer planet>".
- TMWNN 5y ago>chortle, chortle... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0czFnIvKOJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0czFnIvKOJY