Re: Well, crap....
So I guess the Juno mission is going to be a bit of a what-could-have-been. That's disappointing, after all the successes that NASA has had in the last few years with Curiousity, Dawn, New Horizons and other missions
Unless something else goes wrong (which of course it might), Juno should still be able to achieve all of its primary science objectives - although it may take longer than initially planned. I think writing it off as a failure is a bit premature.
I also find it useful to think about it in terms of money: Juno mission cost is about US$1.1 billion (US billion, not the UK one). This sounds like a lot, but it is only 15% of the annual military budget of a country like Indonesia (which happens to be the 30th-highest military spender in the world). It is also less than 17 hours worth of the US military spending, and less than 6 hours worth of the military expenditure by our planet as the whole.
Think about what we could have achieved if instead of pointlessly arming ourselves to the eyebrows (the stage of arming ourselves to the teeth has been passed a long time ago) we would have invested at least a fraction of these resources into science, technology, environment preservation, and social justice.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
