[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.'"

[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

[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