Cassini Geyser-Tasting a Bust

Maggie McKee writes "The Cassini spacecraft flew into the icy geysers erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus on Wednesday in an attempt to figure out what they were made of, but a glitch prevented the probe from actually 'tasting' the plumes. An 'unexplained software hiccup' put the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) out of commission. Ironically, new software designed to improve the ability of the CDA to count particle hits may be to blame. Mission managers may try to re-attempt the plume fly-through later this year."

Comments

Re:This stuff doesn't bode well for software

[Plugh]

I love space exploration. That's why I want NASA and the ESA to close up shop.

By using tax money taken from entire populations to fund their work, they totally distort the market for competitive, market-based space exploration.

If multiple teams were competing against each other, I strongly suspect the quality of all subsystems -- including software -- would vastly improve.

Equally important, when there is a foobar like this one, the money lost would only be that of people who had VOLUNTARILY DONATED IT, not the money of every man, woman, and child in the taxed population.