Hacker News Reader

> Is success measured by the biggest budget or the complexity of the problem?

Certainly not by the budget, spending money isn't hard -- but by success in the face of complexity, yes, absolutely.

How is success tied to a budget or complexity? Success doesn't care how hard/easy it was. It just means it was able to do the thing it was made for. If the task was to be able to write in space, a pencil would be just as successful as a newly developed pen that writes in 0g.

Until graphite dust shorts the emergency hatch release switch. I do agree though that making a sensor and datalink that lasts half a century outside the magnetosphere and can even get updates over that time is extremely impressive and might not be replicable with today's mindset.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com