
How high? How fast?
So let me see if I have this right. A really cool looking bucket is an a kind of 'free fall', plumemting towards a hot and fiery death at the rate of 20.6096 double decker busses per day all because of a feeble blue flame engine that can only produce 0.0001 Norris since they only took up 9.5238 Jubs worth of Xenon.
Seems to me that flying around a planet at about 0.1575% of the maximum velocity of a sheep in a vacuum at an altitude of 2024.8018 brontosaurus requires more energy than that.
"All being well, the engines will - as part of the Drag-Free and Attitude Control Subsystem (DFACS) - automatically maintain GOCE's velocity and altitude while the scientists get down to the job in hand. ."
What job is that then? Watching re-entry fireworks?