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NASA's Juno Spacecraft Braves Jupiter Radiation For a 4th of July Arrival (blastingnews.com)
MarkWhittington writes: July 4, if all goes well, will be an occasion for celebration at NASA as the Juno spacecraft, after a nearly five-year voyage, will go into orbit around Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. Juno will spend its time in a zone of intense radiation, against which it has been armored, in an effort to ferret out Jupiter's secrets. By so doing, NASA hopes to gain insights into the origin of the solar system as well as gaining more knowledge of the gas giant, comprised mostly of hydrogen and helium with trace elements of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur.
NASA has a budget that is 0.5% of the federal budget. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If you want wasteful spending, I'm sure there are other bigger-ticket items than NASA.
I've always wondered the same thing, so I googled "Can you stand on Jupiter?" Condensed version: at the core is a (??) solid rock and some other stuff, and gasses are so dense and hot, they act more like a liquid. Furthermore, it meets the requirements of a planet; 1. It orbits the Sun 2. It has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape) 3. It has "cleared the neighborhood" around its orbit (credit: http://www.city-data.com/forum...)
for the images sent back by JunoCam. It's actually not one of the scientific instruments; NASA says it is rather there for outreach to the public at large. But still - imagine what eye-wateringly beautiful images of Jupiter's cloud tops we may get. Moreover, think of a "pale blue dot" shot through Jovian wisps. I remember being a teenage boy, much engrossed with astronomy (I had my own telescope, bought on "credit on my pocket money"), when the first Voyager images came in. They were printed in a paper magazine - there was no internet back in those times. The images nailed me down on my seat for many, many hours. And now... Juno. Wow. Glad to be alive in these times!
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Without space exploration, you wouldn't have the very computer you typed your message on.
So yeah, your apology is accepted.