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New York, 11:48 PM
Sun Nov 29
11 posts in the last 24 hours
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09/22/09
The average starting salary for a freshly-minted, college degreed civil servant (GS-9/GS-11) in the space agency probably makes in take home pay about $48,000 a year -- give or take a few grand -- the same cost as a year's worth of MIT education.
The biggest fact the average American taxpayer conveniently overlooks is their out of pocket expense of about $60 a year ($5.00 a month, $1.25 a week or $0.18 cents a day out of an average $4,000-$8,000 paid in taxes every April 15) funds NASA's $18 billion a year budget. That's considerably less than what is spent on a couple of date nights at the local Bijou in this era of $10 ticket prices for the latest Hollywood fare.
BTW -- Not to get too technical, or minimize the learning efforts of these MIT students, but 17 miles is *not* Space. The minimally accepted definition is anything above 50 miles. At any rate, the folks at JP Aerospace in Rancho Cordova (Sacramento) -- a volunteer-based organization -- have been doing these types of efforts for years above the 20 mile mark. See www.jpaerospace.com
09/24/09
09/22/09
09/22/09
oh, and they did it for half as much money.
[www.telegraph.co.uk]
09/22/09
[www.newscientist.com]
The article you linked to only talks about the cost of the balloon and the camera - it leaves out the cost of all the other components. The MIT group's cost includes everything they used.
Technologically, neither of these groups did anything all that amazing, but the interesting thing about the MIT students indeed was how little they spent using off-the-shelf materials.
09/22/09
"I would like to reiterate that high-altitude balloon photography has been around for a LONG time. (decades, probably) What is special about what we’ve done is our low budget and ease of assembly/creation."
[space.1337arts.com]
09/22/09
Oh, by the way, there is a bit of a difference between photos from, say, Hubble and photos from, say, a shitty little cell phone camera. Minor details, I know.
09/24/09
09/22/09
09/21/09
09/22/09
Cant live on the moon missions forever. Our scientific calculators have more power than the entire Apollo spacecraft, yet we continue to make no strides to actually go BACK to the moon.
Granted if we spend 1/8th the defense budget on NASA, they might have enough money to actually do things, but some of that has a lot to do with horrible managerial mismanagement and overspending on administrative positions.
09/21/09
09/21/09
Pareene decides the 40th anniversary of the moon landing would be a great time to mock NASA:
[gawker.com]
09/22/09
09/22/09
09/22/09
09/24/09
I do not apologize for this, nor for others' lack of understanding and vision.
09/24/09
09/21/09
09/21/09
09/21/09
[space.1337arts.com]
09/21/09
08/26/09
Seriously, she's too young. Both Eartha Kitt and Julie Newmar were a bit, um, cougarish by the time they were Catwoman. To be Catwoman is much more about intangibles than looks.
08/26/09
08/26/09
08/26/09
BTW) It also works on Google Maps
08/26/09
08/26/09