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Goodby my old friend, you exceeded the expectations of all.

I think that when it was launched, Carl Sagan described Voyager as costing "A penny a world for every man, woman and child in America."

Based on how many incredible images it sent back and how much science it did... it's a reminder that the space program has been one of the few really good things the gummint has done over the decades. The spinoff technologies alone have paid back the expenditures thousands-of-fold.

Not sure what it is today... but in 1994, NASA represented 1/700th of one percent of the Federal Budget. Yes, that is the right number.

Everyone thinks it's so expensive... but it's not.

James Webb is incredible. Hubble (which I worked on -- first repair mission) far exceeded its expectations.

Mars is going to be a real challenge... But maybe we'll do it in my lifetime. Maybe.

Great post Gunfighter... IIRC, aren't you down in JSC neck of the woods?

Sirhr
 
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I can remember being in grade school when Voyager reached Neptune and the initial data was being processed from it. When the images and newsreels were released to the public, we had one those slideshows/audio tape (*ding* turn the knob and proceed to the next slide) presentations during science class for it. That was the birth of my love for space and data/image processing.
James Webb is incredible. Hubble (which I worked on -- first repair mission) far exceeded its expectations.

One of Hubble's biggest impacts was done as a byproduct. Hubble's data was significantly better than the image processing software at the time, so most of the images from Hubble look like garbage compared to what they could have been. Leaps and bounds were made in linear/non-linear noise clean up and multi-layer sharpening because of what Hubble was able to provide. My hope is that Webb can have the same level of impact to the image processing software world that Hubble did, because Webb is able to provide some great data, but it's all marred by those garbage diffraction spikes created by it's vane configuration. Image processing desperately needs a way to eliminate those spikes more efficiently, as it already doable, but it's both time consuming and still imperfect due to it is a very marring process that can create artifacts (that will need their own cleanup routines).
 
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Could be NASA just learned to speak the coded Jive she picked up in her travels. I still have trouble with coded Jive when I enter Birmingham Alabama or Atlanta Ga.
Even after 60 plus years of hearing that,... Uh well,... should we just call it local, dialect ?