- Cassini-Huygens Mission status report

"Jonathan Silverlight" wrote
in message ...
I
hope to live long enough to see pictures from a Jupiter probe, rather
than the floppy-disk worth of data you got from Galileo.

Check the 1980 and/or 1981 Britannica Science and the Future books. Two
Jupiter probes flew by in 1979

On 2004-06-04, Jonathan Silverlight
wrote:

landing. Images from the surfaces of other worlds, viewed for the first
time -- whether from Luna, Mars, Venus, or now, Titan -- have always been
something exciting to me.

Absolutely. I've seen them all - the Russian moon pictures which gave
the Daily Express their scoop; the Surveyor 1 pictures - that was a live

The Grauniad, wasn't it?

(see, this is why we need provincial journalism to stay... um...)

--
-Andrew Gray

In message , Andrew Gray
writes
On 2004-06-04, Jonathan Silverlight
wrote:

landing. Images from the surfaces of other worlds, viewed for the first
time -- whether from Luna, Mars, Venus, or now, Titan -- have always been
something exciting to me.

Absolutely. I've seen them all - the Russian moon pictures which gave
the Daily Express their scoop; the Surveyor 1 pictures - that was a live


Definitely the Daily Express and (IIRC) a Muirhead facsimile machine.
The Russians didn't use the standard aspect ratio, which gave them a
chance to be rude about us getting the picture the wrong shape.

Neil Gerace wrote:
"Jonathan Silverlight" wrote
in message ...

I
hope to live long enough to see pictures from a Jupiter probe, rather
than the floppy-disk worth of data you got from Galileo.


Check the 1980 and/or 1981 Britannica Science and the Future books. Two
Jupiter probes flew by in 1979

He means a Jupiter atmospheric probe. An "in situ" probe.

Jonathan Silverlight wrote:


I know that! What I meant was a descent probe (Jupiter has no surface)
with enough bandwidth for TV like the one Arthur Clarke describes in
"2001". I'd settle for still pictures, though.
The other thing I'd love to see is those nitrogen geysers on Triton.

Screw that...I want to see those volcanos on Io from the surface....
Pat

"Christopher M. Jones" wrote in message
...
Especially considering that the
ESA member countries have a combined GDP roughly on
par with that of the US.

If the European Union would start acting like a *nation* instead of a mutual
feel-good group, it would stand a decent chance of beating the US
economically. However, this would require massive social engineering and
unprecedented changes in worker production. Not to mention the French
farmers would have to actually *farm* for a living instead of spending their
time vandalizing McDonald's.

The US is the powerhouse that it is because we worried more about getting
things done than feeling good about doing them. Without a social safety net,
we *had* to produce.

Scott Hedrick wrote:
"Christopher M. Jones" wrote in message
...

Especially considering that the
ESA member countries have a combined GDP roughly on
par with that of the US.

If the European Union would start acting like a *nation* instead of a mutual
feel-good group, it would stand a decent chance of beating the US
economically. However, this would require massive social engineering and
unprecedented changes in worker production. Not to mention the French
farmers would have to actually *farm* for a living instead of spending their
time vandalizing McDonald's.

If the EU member nations actually had enough confidence
in Democracy and shared enough common ground then maybe
they could actually group together as a single nation.
As it is now they are banded together by a ponderous,
mostly unelected bureaucracy. The EU is edging very
close to tyranny should they go the last mile and
dissolve their individual sovereignties. A tyranny
which misses brutality and privation only in so far as
the member countries are already wealthy. But a
comfortable tyranny is still tyranny.

The EU is not comfortable with the outrageous ideas
of freedom, populism, and free market economies.
Regardless of whether it merges into a more coherent
single nation or not, so long as it has those
roadblocks it will continue to do less well than the
US.


The US is the powerhouse that it is because we worried more about getting
things done than feeling good about doing them. Without a social safety net,
we *had* to produce.

I prefer to distinguish between true social safety
nets and wealth redistribution programs.

The US is a powerhouse precisely because it
encourages, rewards, and *allows* entrepreneurship
and hard work. The US is a powerhouse precisely
because Americans tend to believe that the best way
to achieve prosperity and comfort is to work for it,
not to have it handed out to you from the state.

"Scott Hedrick" wrote in message
...

Not to mention the French
farmers would have to actually *farm* for a living instead of spending
their
time vandalizing McDonald's.

Look in your own back yard first. Doesn't the USA pay some of its farmers
not to plant crops, while elsewhere people are starving?

"Christopher M. Jones" wrote in message
...

The EU is not comfortable with the outrageous ideas
of freedom, populism, and free market economies.

It appears that whoever decided in the USA to pay farmers not to plant crops
isn't exactly right alongside the idea of a free market either.

Christopher M. Jones wrote:

Scott Hedrick wrote:

"Christopher M. Jones" wrote in message
...


If the EU member nations actually had enough confidence
in Democracy and shared enough common ground then maybe
they could actually group together as a single nation.
As it is now they are banded together by a ponderous,
mostly unelected bureaucracy. The EU is edging very
close to tyranny should they go the last mile and
dissolve their individual sovereignties. A tyranny
which misses brutality and privation only in so far as
the member countries are already wealthy. But a
comfortable tyranny is still tyranny.

The EU is not comfortable with the outrageous ideas
of freedom, populism, and free market economies.
Regardless of whether it merges into a more coherent
single nation or not, so long as it has those
roadblocks it will continue to do less well than the
US.



You do realise how long it was between the foundation of the
US and the time they started direct elections of the President and
Senate, don't you?