[X] My Assistant

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Researcher Touts Saturn’s Titan As New Exploration Goal
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer, Space.com
posted: 14 March 2006
01:07 pm ET


"'Titan is just waiting for us…Titan wants us,' [Jonathan] Lunine suggested. 'There is no body in the outer solar system that is better designed for exploration than Titan.'"

[Toma B]

Researcher Touts Saturn’s Titan As New Exploration Goal
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer, Space.com
posted: 14 March 2006
01:07 pm ET
"'Titan is just waiting for us…Titan wants us,' [Jonathan] Lunine suggested. 'There is no body in the outer solar system that is better designed for exploration than Titan.'"

Yeah, and NASA is just waithing for someone to knock on the door and ask for some $2 bil. dollars to build spacecraft to Titan...

[ljk4-1]

B)-->

Yeah, and NASA is just waithing for someone to knock on the door and ask for some $2 bil. dollars to build spacecraft to Titan...
[/quote]

There are now almost 800 billionaires on planet Earth.

http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/

You would think at least ONE of them would be thrilled
to sponsor a planetary mission.

Or do I just not understand the really rich? Or even the
mildly rich? Or even the ones who have enough funds
leftover for a nice vacation to Disneyland?

--------------------

"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

[Jeff7]

--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Toma B @ Mar 14 2006, 03:29 PM) </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
Yeah, and NASA is just waithing for someone to knock on the door and ask for some $2 bil. dollars to build spacecraft to Titan...
There are now almost 800 billionaires on planet Earth.

http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/

You would think at least ONE of them would be thrilled
to sponsor a planetary mission.

Or do I just not understand the really rich? Or even the
mildly rich? Or even the ones who have enough funds
leftover for a nice vacation to Disneyland?

The objective of acquiring huge amounts of wealth is not to spend it. It's to invest the money to acquire even greater wealth....and it just sort of continues in that cycle indefinitely.

[helvick]

The objective of acquiring huge amounts of wealth is not to spend it. It's to invest the money to acquire even greater wealth....and it just sort of continues in that cycle indefinitely.

However there are some exceptions - the ridiculously wealthy (Gates, Allen & Soros nowadays, Tate, Carnegie, Guggenheim & Rockefeller in days of yore) sometimes seem to need to do something as a way for them to make a more permanent mark for themselves since they have clearly gotten all the high scores in the money game.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

What's really depressing about that story is that the difficulties of space science funding as a whole have already started encouraging rival researchers to start attacking each other's goals -- in this case, Lunine is using Europa Orbiter's troubles as an excuse to push money for Titan instead. Space scientists, in short, have now hit that stage in the "Raft of the Medusa" story where the cannibalism started.

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

What's really depressing about that story is that the difficulties of space science funding as a whole have already started encouraging rival researchers to start attacking each other's goals -- in this case, Lunine is using Europa Orbiter's troubles as an excuse to push money for Titan instead. Space scientists, in short, have now hit that stage in the "Raft of the Medusa" story where the cannibalism started.

In case anyone missed Bruce's artistic allusion, he is referrring to Theodore Géricault's 1819 painting "The Raft of the Medusa," Oil on canvas, 491 x 716 cm, which is hanging in the Musée du Louvre in Paris.

Of course, Bruce probably recalls that I used this painting for a similar analogy in another group

[algorimancer]

There are now almost 800 billionaires on planet Earth.
You would think at least ONE of them would be thrilled
to sponsor a planetary mission.

I've thought for some time that some of these companies were missing an opportunity. Consider the advertising potential in being able claim something like "The Microsoft/Intel Titan Rover is running Windows Vista on an Intel Itanium-based platform. If it can handle the outer reaches of the solar system, think what it can do for your desktop."

[Bob Shaw]

In case anyone missed Bruce's artistic allusion, he is referrring to Theodore Géricault's 1819 painting "The Raft of the Medusa," Oil on canvas, 491 x 716 cm, which is hanging in the Musée du Louvre in Paris.

Of course, Bruce probably recalls that I used this painting for a similar analogy in another group

Alex and Bruce:

It is a joy - nay, an unmitigated pleasure - to have two such unassuming aesthetes acting as beacon-carriers in the Stygian darkness of the uncultured, indeed eldritch, darkness of the sadly ill-informed members of UMSF! We are not worthy! We are not worthy! We are not worthy!

I've thought for some time that some of these companies were missing an opportunity. Consider the advertising potential in being able claim something like "The Microsoft/Intel Titan Rover is running Windows Vista on an Intel Itanium-based platform. If it can handle the outer reaches of the solar system, think what it can do for your desktop."

Er...

...'Out of Memory', 'File not found', Viruses, oooh, I could go on! It's funny, but when there was that first post-landing difficulty all those years ago, my immediate worry was that the word 'Microsoft' was painted on the side of the MER WEB - possibly below the Lego robotic arm...

Bob Shaw

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Alex and Bruce:

It is a joy - nay, an unmitigated pleasure - to have two such unmitigated aesthetes acting as beacon-carriers in the Stygian darkness of the uncultured, indeed eldritch, darkness of the sadly ill-informed members of UMSF! We are not worthy! We are not worthy! We are not worthy!

A little backstory. These artistic allusions arose 2.5 years ago in my Yahoo! Group (planetary_sciences) where I used paintings as descriptors for another discussion group, one reknowned for its "interesting" membership, though one which "shall remain nameless to protect the innocent." Bruce revived them here, no doubt due to some residual memory of my "wittiness."

The title of that thread I initiated was "Did Hieronymous Bosch foresee [discussion group name deleted]?" and the message I wrote was

A unique insight stemming from my "extra" B.S. in the History of Western Art.
See http://www.philosophy.eku.edu/Williams/platoart/bosch.htm

In a follow up message, I posted:

Perhaps another famous painting is more descriptive:

Theodore Géricault
The Raft of the Medusa
1819
Oil on canvas
491 x 716 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
http://www.roland-collection.com/rolandcol...tion/10/365.htm

I do, however, recall referring to the [discussion group name deleted] as an "eclectic milieu." This is a euphemistic description. Since the vision I actually had in my head when typed those words was of the characters in the bar scene from the first Star Wars movie, perhaps [discussion group moderator] should rename it the Mos Eisley Cantina ;-)

[Bob Shaw]

Alex:

An eclectic milieu? Try slaying that with falshe teethsh!

Bob Shaw

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Alex and Bruce:

It is a joy - nay, an unmitigated pleasure - to have two such unassuming aesthetes acting as beacon-carriers in the Stygian darkness of the uncultured, indeed eldritch, darkness of the sadly ill-informed members of UMSF! We are not worthy! We are not worthy! We are not worthy!

I'll go along with that. But, actually, I DON'T remember Alex using that analogy before. I came up with it All On My Own. (Given the current space science situation, however, it would be difficult NOT to think of it. Bloodthirsty mobs at science conferences aren't all that common, at least at the ones I've attended.)

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

I'll go along with that. But, actually, I DON'T remember Alex using that analogy before. I came up with it All On My Own.

Gee, why am I not surprised at that, Bruce? I guess every witticism or every good idea MUST have originated with you. I should start calling you the Milton Berle of space discussion groups. You only steal from the best.


EDIT

Note for the planetary_sciences alumni here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/planetary_sc...es/message/9538 (Alex)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/planetary_sc...es/message/9551 (ectoterrestrial)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/planetary_sc...es/message/9552 (Alex)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/planetary_sc...es/message/9565 (Bruce)

This post has been edited by AlexBlackwell: Mar 16 2006, 04:38 PM

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

No, I'm just clever enough to come up with all of them independently. I just never get credit for any of them. (The eerie thing is that this actually did start being true in the late 1980s: I'd come up with joke after joke, tell it to my family, and then see somebody else come up with it independently elsewhere a few months later. In the case of the Raft of the Medusa, however -- although I can't read those blog entries Alex listed -- I'm willing to accept that I was working off a subconscious memory. All I can say is that it wasn't a conscious one.)

This is a bit reminiscent of Red Skelton, who was universally detested by his writers on his TV show. Once he was asked during an interview how he came up with all those clever jokes and replied, "God puts them into my mouth." The next week his writers handed him 40 blank pages of paper and told him to have God write his script for him. In my case God frequently DOES put them into my mouth; He just also makes sure I never get credit for any of them.

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

No, I'm just clever enough to come up with all of them independently. I just never get credit for any of them. (The eerie thing is that this actually did start being true in the late 1980s: I'd come up with joke after joke, tell it to my family, and then see somebody else come up with it independently elsewhere a few months later. In the case of the Raft of the Medusa, however -- although I can't read those blog entries Alex listed -- I'm willing to accept that I was working off a subconscious memory. All I can say is that it wasn't a conscious one.)

Ah, now we're making progress Actually, I was just needling you, Bruce. No surprise there. I did, however, remember the "Raft of the Medusa"-series of posts from planetary_sciences from two and a half years ago, and I thought it was, say, syncrhonicity at work when you echoed it here.