Re: Music of the spheres
I wouldn't play down the amount of education involved.
p.s. emphasis
616 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Aug 2018
Ingenuity typically has a couple of weeks between flights, so an extra 65 minutes of transmission time doesn't really matter. Bandwidth is more likely to be an issue due to how the inverse square law affects signal strength. Actual flight should be pretty easy due to Titan's atmosphere being 45% more dense than Earth's atmosphere. One other thing: Titan is *cold*.
"It's a shame there is little information how people achieved the ice age last time."
Communities previously living north of the Thames faced a simple choice: either don't be north of the Thames, or don't be living. The reason: a huge ice sheet covering the land.
"On Earth (with air, water and food available) the minimum number for long term survival seems to be about 2000 - fewer than that and inbreeding becomes a problem (smaller groups have survived when there has been a trickle of new people arriving)."
The population of North Sentinel Island is estimated to be about 40, and no more than 400 at most. They actively prevent new people arriving (by killing anyone who tries). It is likely they have been isolated for a very long time as locals from neighbouring islands cannot understand their language.
Billions?? 75 million is peanuts by comparison. Please pay close attention to headlines saying "millions" and those saying "billions" as the difference is enormous.
The money spent on this launch, $75m, is certainly nowhere near enough to make a noticeable difference to living standards in a country with 1,429m people. 5 cents each? Pfft.
What this launch does do is advance technical capabilities, boost national pride, and (perhaps most importantly) position India as a genuine contender in the upcoming space race: this small investment has the potential to reap huge rewards.
As a kid I watched the test flights of the BAe146 passing low over my house, a passenger "whisperjet" with a similar brief: to offer quiet short-haul flights to&from inner-city STOL airports. It operated successfully for many years from places such as London docklands.