Cassini's First Glimpse of Saturn

EccentricAnomaly writes "The Cassini spacecraft has snapped its first picture of Saturn from 177 million miles away. Cassini is due to arrive at Saturn in July 2004, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn (Pioneer 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2 just did quick flybys of Saturn). Cassini carries the Huygens probe which will land on Saturn's moon Titan in January 2005."

Comments

Why

[Pussy Is Money]

I know this is cool and all... but still... we have so many problems on our own earth... shouldn't we solve those first? I mean i have no prolbem with a bunch of scientists playing with taxpayer money but shouldn't the common men get seomthing out of it as well??

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know Columbus, this new world thing is cool and all, but, we have so many problems here in Spain...Shouldn't we solve those first? I mean I have no problem with explorer playing with the crown's money(peoples' taxes), but shouldn't the aristocrocy (and the people) get something out of it as well??

Re:Why

[smd4985]

public works and government programs are defn. useful things, but to discount *knowledge* as a potential payoff from scientific discovery is shortsighted. honestly, this taxpayer would gladly see some pork barrel spending diverted to NASA (or education, or welfare to work programs).

Re:Why

[Christopher Thomas]

I don't know Columbus, this new world thing is cool and all, but, we have so many problems here in Spain...Shouldn't we solve those first? I mean I have no problem with explorer playing with the crown's money(peoples' taxes), but shouldn't the aristocrocy (and the people) get something out of it as well?

Columbus's trip actually had a justifiable business purpose - he was looking for a more economical trade route to India (hence the whole "indians" misnomer that's plagued us ever since). My understanding - which may be incorrect on a few points - is that it was well-known by the aristocracy that the earth was round (and so that such a trip was theoretically possible), but it was thought that the ships of the time wouldn't be able to make such a long trip (and they might have been right; Columbus only had to make it part way around before finding the New World).

Space exploration is blue-sky research. It does not have a strong business case for it. That doesn't mean it shouldn't happen; it just means that it's unlikely to ever be directly profitable.

Possible justifications include:

• It stimulates high tech R&D, and spreads money around the high tech industries, which has direct and indirect spinoff benefits for the rest of the economy.
  
  
• It will provide unforseen payoffs down the road (blue-sky research often does; remember the laser?).
  
  
• People like it. If enough people think it's cool, it's worth spending money on even without a direct payback mechanism (it's the cultural equivalent of playing an arcade game).
  

I personally feel that it is in our best interests as a species to have a good understanding of space and to exist on multiple worlds (as our outlook for surviving in geologic time at any single location is not so good). This, in addition to it being cool and stimulating R&D, justifies it as far as I'm concerned. YMMV.

Re:Why

[waveclaw]

shouldn't the common men[sic] get seomthing out of it as well??

One of my favorite quotes:

"Cutting the space budget really restores
my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams,
goals, and ideals and lets us get straight
to the business of hate, debauchery, and
self-annihilation."
-- Johnny Hart

Re:Why

[Christopher Thomas]

You could make the space program immediately profitable by putting up a real space station.

How?

Such a station could certainly be built, but how would it generate enough revenue to even pay for its day to day operating and resupply costs, let alone its construction?

All proposals for large-scale space projects that are supposed to be profitable assume that there's a very large market for space-based facilities (large enough to make the amortized cost of the construction and upkeep lower than the cost of providing the needed services from the ground).

Given that industry has no pressing need to send anything more than a few satellites into space, where's the demand? You're not going to get enough tourists to pay for a $10 trillion "real" station.

In order to have a really useful space station, something that doesn't have an insanely high operating cost, it must be large.

Anything smaller than a million tonnes won't be self-sufficient. Any large station we'd build any time soon would be *more* expensive than a small station.

NASA, stop throwing away booster tanks; Take them to the ISS and duct tape them together if you have to. They're useful.


They also have mass, which means significantly less payload if you spend the extra effort to lift them to orbit instead of letting them drop. Some of the effort's already been spent by jettison time, but not all of it by a long shot.

In summary, lifting the tanks isn't free. You might as well lift something more useful instead.

They get pretty pictures.

[123571113]

Isn't that enough?

Re:Ahem.

[blibbleblobble]

OK, so how come we can't get a train or bus to arrive in time? It's a much shorter distance and scaled down, we should be able to get millisecond accuracy across town.

"Please close the doors, this satellite is ready to depart."

"We are sorry to announce that the Cassini Saturn service will be delayed by ... fifty ... eight ... minutes, due to ... the delay of an incoming satellite."

"Would the driver of Cassini 2002 please report to launchpad 2, where your satellite is waiting."

(p.s. yes it's a satellite (of saturn) and not a probe this time)

Re:Great

[Christopher Thomas]

PR, but what's the use? Detailed pics of Saturn and rings, yay, but nothing we don't have. Although, the huygens probe actually looks useful, I think NASA should be more ambitious.

Pretty pictures of Saturn are the least of what's coming back. Go to the mission objectives page for the probe to see all of the experiments that will be done.

What, exactly, do you _want_ them to do? Bear in mind that sending humans *anywhere* costs at least 20 times what a probe with comparable scientific capabilities costs.