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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

I would say I'd like this for all the planets. What Cassini and Juno brought us is simply stunning. Some of the details visible in Jupiter's clouds or Saturn's rings have just been amazing.

The images Voyagers and New Horizons brought are nice and not to be discounted, but fly-bys vs orbit insertion missions just not the same. We should have oribters parked around each of our local major bodies. We should then have rovers on all of the solid bodies (that won't melt the thing in mere hours) after that. The MRO is such a great example.

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Even the Rosetta/Philae images of the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko are out of this world!

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Rosett...

From that link:

Launch: 2 March 2004

Mission end: 30 September 2016

Then, a bit lower on the page: 786 days in space

Huh? Anyone got insights on what type of math was used here? Is there mm/inch type conversion problem? Am I just dumb? 12 years * 365 > 786.

786 days is time spent in the vicinity of the comet. From 6 August 2014 (arrival at comet) to 30 September 2016 (mission end).

But that's not what the words say. "In space" is stated specifically, not "Time in orbit" or some such. You're being very very generous

If I had Bill Gates' money, I'd be funding that.

Elon is fixing the launch cost side of it.

If you have a probe design process that doesn't go through the US congress, it should be substantially faster and cheaper.

I often ponder if there is some sort of heuristic law that determines the level of bureaucracy based on an organization's structure.

In the case of the Congress, the problem is not bureaucratic slowness but the desire that as many companies from every state as possible took part in the project. Every congressperson wants to bring some business to their constituencies; what this business ultimately achieves may be of secondary importance.

I think all organizations drift toward dysfunction over time.

Those that have no competition inevitably end up there.

I think there's an inverse square rule relating the size (number of employees/managment) to the dysfunction

The amount of time it takes a group of people who decided to go somewhere to actually get in their cars and get moving goes up as the square of the number of people.

In that scenario, there's an inverse square law of how much cannabis was consumed between that group of people just to come to a consensus of where to go to get food that everyone has already agreed to being hungry an hour ago.

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