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jadeheart

Member

From: barrow ak

Registered: 2003-11-03

Posts: 134

Re: eddington canceled

now we have to wait for Kepler & TPF... wonder if they'll suffer the same fate?

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/e … 31107.html

they axed this AND a mercury lander in favor of a laser interferometer that'll look for gravity waves.

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You can stand on a mountaintop with your mouth open for a very long time before a roast duck flies into it.  -Chinese Proverb

Christina

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2002-05-07

Posts: 59

Re: eddington canceled

*sigh*

These fancy science things just do not capture the public imagination the way landers do. And without the public being interested, funding will just get worse.

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[i]the early bird may get the worm, but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese[/i]

BoBo

InActive

Registered: 2003-11-02

Posts: 5

Re: eddington canceled

Kepler seems to be on schedule for a 2007 launch:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/extrasolar-03q.html

Gennaro

Member

From: Eta Cassiopeiae (no, Sweden re

Registered: 2003-03-25

Posts: 591

Re: eddington canceled

Indeed, I was going to report on this myself if I hadn't found this post. This makes me so mad...

From the space.com interview:

"If there had been any way to keep it, I would have. But the only way would have been to drop LISA, and LISA is Nobel Prize territory." ---
"The choice before the SPC was relatively simple," said Bo Andersen, a current SPC member and its past president. "Do we start LISA Pathfinder, or Eddington? We knew we had a program that had no margins, but the decision was painful. We all knew that Eddington would be world-class and put Europe ahead of the rest of the world in this field."

- Yeah, and we couldn't allow that to happen, could we? Typical European unmitigated stupidity. They dropped the search for Terra-sized extrasolar planets in exchange for the all but irrelevant phenomenon of gravity waves! Nobel prize territory, my ass. Who cares for such empty laurels, anyway?

If there was only one ESA mission to choose from within the next five years, I had still picked Eddington over everything else and I'm sure the rest of the public would agree.

The news from ESA:s own site:

http://www.esrin.esa.it/export/esaCP/SE … dex_0.html

jadeheart

Member

From: barrow ak

Registered: 2003-11-03

Posts: 134

Re: eddington canceled

These fancy science things just do not capture the public imagination the way landers do. And without the public being interested, funding will just get worse.

wait!  i have an idea.  on the next shuttle launched, we put britney spears in the payload and put her in LEO.  nude.  maybe that'd generate some interest...  of course, she wouldn't be a lander, so maybe not.

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You can stand on a mountaintop with your mouth open for a very long time before a roast duck flies into it.  -Chinese Proverb