Canadian Robot Could Rescue Hubble

NETHED writes "We have all seen Stories about The Hubble Space Telescope and its current problems. Since then, NASA has okayed the fix of the HST. It seems that America's neighbor to the North has some answers. Dextre to the rescue. The mission would not be decided upon until next summer says Sean O'Keefe. It seems that NASA saw this as a good way to listen to the public for about 1.6 billion dollars." Update: 08/11 15:45 GMT by T : Reader Michael Mol dug up a link with a more technical explanation of Dextre, noting "It looks like Dextre's normally supposed to be attached to something before it performs work."

Comments

NASA has become bloated, fat, and lazy

[chud67]

After watching many of NASA's blunders recently and seeing some of the excellent work being done by X-Prize contestants (SpaceShip One) for little money, I have become convinced that NASA has become so bloated and inefficient that it is basically Amtrak in space. The whole organization should be nuked and the private sector should get all the grants. The money would be spent more efficiently.

Re:$1.6B US or Canadian?

[JediTrainer]

Is the $1.6B cost of this in US or CA funds? 'Cause I got about $1.6B Canadian back in change from my Value Meal yesterday...

$1.6B CAD would be about $1.2B USD, my dear Mr. Troll. Your jokes are getting old. Must be why you need to import all of your decent comedians from up north.

Re:Or it might come from French

[fingusernames]

Uh, and just where did the barbarian Gauls (er, French) acquire the word? Your definition gives you the answer: L. dexteritas, fr. dexter: cf. F. dext['e]rit['e]. See Dexter. The capital L means Latin.

Considering that French grew largely from low, gutter Latin, it shouldn't be a surprise.

Also, the derivation is interesting. As dexter means not only on the right, but also favored, and dexteritas (capable, apt, so on) is derived from dexter, it appears that the Romans had a preference for the right-handed that extended into language. I feel sorry for those left-handed Roman kids...

Larry

Just ditch it!

[dcstimm]

Why are we spending so much money on such an old machine? I get the question all the time, should I invest tons of money to upgrade my P2 400mhz computer? Why when you have no where to go with it? its using a BX motherboard the most you can do is upgrade it to a p3 slot1 cpu, and that would do nothing. And if you wanted to upgrade it to a p4, you would need a new powersupply, new motherboard, new ram, new video card, new sound card, new faster harddrive(who wants a 5400rpm harddrive) and new cpu. YOUR BETTER OFF GETTING THE NEW COMPUTER! Dont waste your money on an old machine when you can take the same money and invest in something new and better. So ditch that POS and lets build a new one!