STUPID To Crash Cassini Probe

On Sat, 21 Oct 2017 14:00:58 -0700, Fred J. McCall
wrote:

Mr. B1ack wrote:

On Sat, 21 Oct 2017 12:25:38 -0400, SteveGG
wrote:

I couldn't agree more !

The contamination issue would be totally laughable, if it wasn't so
sad and ridiculous, but that's the official "reason".

What a waste. It could have been parked in a stable orbit and made
available for future science, historians, etc.

Hey, it's got some memory space onboard ... it could
be instructed to save up periodic observations so
every once in a while we could download the stash.
Doesn't hurt to have an eye way "out there" either in
case something interesting happens.


How much memory do you think it has on board? How do you think we
normally talk to it. It was already extended for NINE YEARS.

We could get some useful stuff form it NINTEEN years
from now. Why did we waste that opportunity ??? The
Voyagers seemed useless relics too ... until we got
all interested in the heliopause. Surprise, we had
usable spacecraft in the vicinity because nobody'd
bothered to crash them into anything.

The "contamination" thing is one of the worst excuses
I've ever heard. MIGHT, under some circumstances,
have some merit for Mars if we were worried about
mold spores or whatever, but Saturn ... nah. A nice
safe orbit was possible.


Not Saturn. The moons. Which we might decide to inhabit some day. In
some ways they're better than Mars. You can't just park it and forget
about it.

How long have those moons been there ? Yes, we could
have parked it and pretty much forgotten about it. And if
grey aliens kicked it into a moon, so what ? It's a flyspeck.
Those moons get bombarded with random galactic crap
all the time.

I think somebody said "Hey, let's CRASH it into
Saturn, that'd be like SO cool !" ... and there
went a taxpayer gigabuck.


I think you should let someone else do the thinking. That's a
preposterous notion.

Um ... not so much actually ......... socialize with
some tech-nerds for awhile and you'll see :-)

Hmm ... Pence is now nominally the top dog of the
US space effort so it might not hurt to complain to
him about this sort of thing. Policy CAN change.
Gigabuck probes should not be considered part
of a first-person-shooter game by JPL nerds. If
it still mostly works, KEEP it around.


Policy CAN change but this one wouldn't have. A number of studies
were done to figure out a 'safe' way to dispose of or park the thing.

It didn't need to be disposed of AT ALL.