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Venus: The Forgotten Planet
Anonymous Coward from Winnipeg writes "These days many of us are consumed by daily batches of spectacular images from our twin Marsbots and international fleet of Mars-orbiting craft. But we should not forget our sister planet, Venus, which has undergone significant exploration in years past. Don P. Mitchell's home page features an intriguing refinement of Soviet surface images using modern reprocessing techniques. Don also includes a terrific overview of the Soviet Venus exploration program. Complete radar mapping of Venus was provided by Magellan ten years ago. Sadly, according to the Venus Exploration Timeline, only two new missions to Venus are envisioned: ESA's Venus Express (using leftover Mars Express and Rosetta equipment) and JAXA's Planet-C orbiter. Apparently, no landings on Venus are planned - is this another case of humanity losing advanced space travel capability due to neglect, like Apollo?" (We've mentioned Mitchell's reworked images before -- amazing stuff.)
What do you mean "our" marsbots, Mr. Winnipeg? Those are my tax dollars hard at work.
I suppose the French can lay an equal claim to them too?
Bleh. Bad day.
In other words you can't admit that you've been shown just how dumb you are. I love how the anonymous cowards always try to cover their ignorance with pretending they were trolling. Face it, you were dumb and someone caught you at it.
Sapere aude!
(1) Not many Canadians say "aboot".
(2) Canada does have its own space agency and does contribute to American space programs, in addition to European, though I do not know if Canada contributed to any of those programs.
(3) The poster may have been thinking from a "human exploration" point of view. To horribly paraphrase Boston public, "Canadians live in this world, as opposed to Americans who live in America." (or something...)
(4) Even if Canadian tax dollars are not at work, remember that the United States (and Canada and some other countries) consume a disproportionate amount of the world's resources. Almost everybody is paying for the United States to do the things it does, if you get beyond that first layer of abstraction.
(5) How many Canadians have contributed to the American space program since the Avro Arrow?