Is one picture worth a hundred billion dollars? That’s the mostly-in-jest price tag that was put on this week’s portrait of the virtually complete international space station. Pictures may not be the most practical payoff from space exploration, but they’re definitely the biggest crowd-pleasers, as demonstrated by the latest batch of “Month in Space” pictures.
The entertainment value of imagery from the final frontier is just one of the five E's that justify jumping off this planet. The space station is expected to contribute to the other E's as well - for example, through proposed energy-beaming experiments and a host of studies aimed at smoothing the way for future exploration.
When all that research is added to images such as this week's "$100 billion photographs," does that make the estimated cost of the space station project worth it?
via Billion-dollar pictures - Cosmic Log - msnbc.com.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Billion-dollar pictures
Alan Boyle has this interesting entry on CosmicLog:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Reminds me of the failed Mars Observer mission of 92. To calibrate its cameras a fuzzy image of Mars was taken in its final approach, then contact with the probe was lost. A scientist looking at the photo commented that it was "the most expensive 8 by 10 glossy in history," costing almost a billion dollars. Heck, you can see it here:
http://aerospacescholars.jsc.nasa.gov/HAS/Modules/Earth-to-Mars/8/5.cfm
Post a Comment