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NASA Announces Next Mars Mission
Grant Henninger writes "Today, NASA announced their final selection for the Mars Scout 2013 mission: Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN. MAVEN will provide the first direct measurements ever taken to address key scientific questions about Mars's evolution by measuring characteristics of its atmospheric gases, upper atmosphere, solar wind, and ionosphere. The mission, estimated to cost $485M, is scheduled for launch in late 2013."
It was a 1% for 1 year. That's about 6 years...
The problem is lack of regulation. Let the "free market" do whatever it wants and people will fuck it up. It could be malice or it could be incompetence, either way, oversight is needed.
End transmission.
Ok, ok, granted, I exaggerated to make a point, 1% was as low as it got, but nevertheless, it was unrealistically low. And as they racked up the interest back up they shouldn't be surprised when people started defaulting on their loans.
If you want more of regulation, then you want more of this. Markets work to direct investment where it is needed pretty damn well, but if you have a central bank that keeps fiddling with the damn interest rates like a PS3 joystick, it is very unfair to point your finger at the 'free market' for fucking it up.
For a more graphical comparison check this little article from Mises.org. Not a close fit as South America and Africa, but close.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
So many assertions, all based on people's political philosophy and not on data!
I find the "oversight over the free market" comment more hilarious, though. Always the desire for some higher power, be it your parents, government, or God to come and save the day. If you have a government overseeing everything then you just have one big possible point of failure as opposed to just smaller points of failure.
Look, I know you're probably young, idealistic, and ready to march to the polls ready to vote for Barack Obama like your sociology professor instructed you to do, but massive government oversight of peoples' lives and dealings, whether they be business or personal (not like the distinction is meaningful or real) is ever really a just or good idea.
Business does not exist merely to serve you, although politicians may tell you otherwise. Learn that you are not the center of the world, that other people have a right to try to make money and improve their lives, even if it might mean that someone else can't be top dog, and maybe we'll be one tiny step closer to a freer country instead of one kept in the shackles of expecting a higher power to save us instead of doing what it's always done and making things worse.
FTFA:
the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter [...] camera can show Martian landscape features as small as a kitchen table
Exactly how big is a kitchen table? Is it an official unit of measurement? While we're at it, how long is a piece of string?
No wonder the original Polar Lander crashed...
I actually cannot believe how inexpensive NASA's missions are. It costs just $485M to go to Mars, and how many billions or trillions of dollars to invade Iraq? Seriously, NASA's missions recently have been a bargain.
Nope. SI units are a lot older than nine years, and confusing units on a mars mission deserves getting laughed at for at least a decade.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
Did they let professor Frink name this one?
"Now I'd like to announce Nasa's new Mars spacecraft, the HOYVIN-Maven"
If you have a government overseeing everything then you just have one big possible point of failure as opposed to just smaller points of failure.
Care to elaborate how the Credit Crisis is a "small point of failure"?
but massive government oversight of peoples' lives and dealings, whether they be business or personal (not like the distinction is meaningful or real) is ever really a just or good idea.
Yeah, because giving a democracy the power to do something as radical as keep a stable currency is such a huge intrusion. We should all be scribbling our own IOU's to pay for things. Works much better./sarcasm
Any nation that still uses Imperial units deserves to be laughed at.