Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama • Hacker News Board

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#61

Post by asmithmd1 » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 3:56 PM UTC

RogerL wrote: post #54

drinchev wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to agree on that, because I'm not a US citizen. Anyway what NASA / EU space programs are doing is far more significant for humanity ( IMHO ) than what Facebook Oculus and Snapchat are trying to achieve, so it looks really unfair.

Those 'toys' create thousands of jobs. They create demand, which means people work to purchase them. That work brings value to society (person x helped build a bridge, y did a dental implant, z built a yacht (horrors, a toy for a rich person, but recursively read this post)). This is how economics works. You can't artificially split out some random activity, decide it is 'frivolous', and tax it out of existence. We a…

We can and do all the time.

Ponzi schemes for example are illegal. Gambling creates no net value so it is tightly regulated. Cigarettes are a net drag on society so they are highly taxed.

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#62

Post by est » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 3:56 PM UTC

heyitskevin wrote: post #40

For a visual of how far away Pluto really is from Earth(and really how far away everything in our solar system is from eachother) I recommend checking out Riding Light https://vimeo.com/117815404 "This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective." The video is 45 minutes long and m…

It would be cooler if the background stars follow the rules of relativity.

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#63

Post by mikeash » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

toxican wrote: post #22

dvh wrote: post #2

If this is not astro picture of the year, I don't know what is: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/nh-...

For all the awe that the Martian and Lunar photos instill in me, this is just the most amazing thing ever. For the entirety of my life up until recently, Pluto was this impossibly distant planet that we knew very little about. We didn't even hardly know what it really looked like. I think the most we had was the blurry Hubble shots. And now? Now I'm looking up close and personal at this impossibly distant object and…

Before this year, I believe this was the best image of Pluto:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto#/media/File:Pluto_animie...

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#64

Post by mikeash » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 3:59 PM UTC

psygong2 wrote: post #9

dvh wrote: post #2

If this is not astro picture of the year, I don't know what is: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/nh-...

It's a black and white photo of rocks and ice. It's interesting that it is Pluto, but photo of the year? Why?

What sort of candidate photo would you find more interesting than this one?

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#65

Post by jdnier » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 4:03 PM UTC

dombili wrote: post #53

heyitskevin wrote: post #40

For a visual of how far away Pluto really is from Earth(and really how far away everything in our solar system is from eachother) I recommend checking out Riding Light https://vimeo.com/117815404 "This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective." The video is 45 minutes long and m…

Fantastic video. Thank you for sharing.

And Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" makes the perfect soundtrack.

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#66

Post by valarauca1 » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 4:05 PM UTC

est wrote: post #62

heyitskevin wrote: post #40

For a visual of how far away Pluto really is from Earth(and really how far away everything in our solar system is from eachother) I recommend checking out Riding Light https://vimeo.com/117815404 "This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective." The video is 45 minutes long and m…

It would be cooler if the background stars follow the rules of relativity.

So disappeared?

They'd blueshift up past gamma rays and become invisible. While behind you they'd redshift down to nothing.

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#67

Post by nostrademons » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 4:07 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #57

heyitskevin wrote: post #40

For a visual of how far away Pluto really is from Earth(and really how far away everything in our solar system is from eachother) I recommend checking out Riding Light https://vimeo.com/117815404 "This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective." The video is 45 minutes long and m…

Cool! I once designed a scale model of the solar system for an elementary school class. The sun was a ping-pong ball. At this scale, earth is about three meters from the sun, and Pluto is a hundred meters away. Both earth and pluto at this scale are too small to see with the naked eye.

I did the NSF Young Scholars Program at MIT Haystack observatory the summer after 8th grade, and one of the events was a scale model of the solar system. The sun was a basketball, Jupiter was a golf ball, Saturn was one of those little rubber bouncy balls, and all the inner planets were grains of sand chosen to mimic their colors and relative sizes. Jupiter was off at the end of the parking lot, Saturn was in the grass at the edge of the site, and Uranus/Neptune/Pluto were omitted for lack of space.

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#68

Post by mikeash » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 4:10 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #25

drinchev wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually photos are evaluated not only for the reality that they've captured, but also how hard it was to take that photo. In the case of Pluto's high-resolution photos, there are maybe billion dollars behind it and hundreds of people that worked for years before actually the photo has been taken.

According to this page [0], which links to a broken link on NASA's site as source, it was "only" $720 million, not billions. I only mention it to underscore that our intuition on the cost of NASA is often wrong. You see a lot of people complaining about the relevance of spending on NASA, when they actually represent a very small part of the overall budget and they spend the money very well. In contrast, Facebook boug…

It's pretty amazing how cheap that is.

For $720 million, they built a half-ton spacecraft, launched it into space, sent it on a path out of the solar system, tracked and guided it all the way, and had it gather about a million times more data than existed before about a particular small icy body billions of miles away.

To put it into perspective, that's about what it would cost to buy two A380 airliners. Two. You can buy two airliners that are not much different from the ones that existed 40 years ago, but that happen to be somewhat larger and carry some more people, and then have to spend even more money to operate them, or for the same money NASA can do an entire mission to Pluto from start to finish.

Or for a different perspective, for the cost of the B-2 program (an airplane which basically never had a mission, whose key feature probably doesn't work anymore, and which in any case is far too expensive and precious to risk in any environment where there's the slightest chance it could be shot down), assuming costs would be the same as Pluto, NASA could send seven missions each to every planet in the Solar System including Pluto.

For yet another perspective, it's about 1/9th the cost of the Washington Metro's Silver Line product. So, one mission each to every planet in the Solar system including Pluto, or 60 miles of railroad track and 11 light-rail stations.

It's not a sign that people aren't being taxed enough, it's a sign that NASA is a bastion of amazing efficiency and capability in a sea of unbelievable waste.

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#69

Post by asmithmd1 » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 4:11 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #63

toxican wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the awe that the Martian and Lunar photos instill in me, this is just the most amazing thing ever. For the entirety of my life up until recently, Pluto was this impossibly distant planet that we knew very little about. We didn't even hardly know what it really looked like. I think the most we had was the blurry Hubble shots. And now? Now I'm looking up close and personal at this impossibly distant object and…

Before this year, I believe this was the best image of Pluto: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto#/media/File:Pluto_animie...

Here is our best image of Pluto just 3 months ago:

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/nh-...

The image above is from the same camera as the images released today. Taking great pictures is not about the camera but about getting in the right spot at the right time

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#70

Post by mikeash » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 4:16 PM UTC

RogerL wrote: post #54

drinchev wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to agree on that, because I'm not a US citizen. Anyway what NASA / EU space programs are doing is far more significant for humanity ( IMHO ) than what Facebook Oculus and Snapchat are trying to achieve, so it looks really unfair.

Those 'toys' create thousands of jobs. They create demand, which means people work to purchase them. That work brings value to society (person x helped build a bridge, y did a dental implant, z built a yacht (horrors, a toy for a rich person, but recursively read this post)). This is how economics works. You can't artificially split out some random activity, decide it is 'frivolous', and tax it out of existence. We a…

"Dollars spent do not disappear" is true but meaningless. What counts is the wealth people create, and the opportunity cost of what you do.

For an extreme example, imagine that every day I hire somebody to move my wood pile to the other side of the house. After two days I'm back where I started, but I've wasted a person's labor for two days. The dollars I paid them didn't disappear, but we've lost whatever useful activity they might have done during that time.

Not all work brings value to society. Just because someone is given money to do something doesn't make that something useful. On the other hand, just because something isn't of value to society doesn't mean it should be prohibited or taxed out of existence. And determining whether something is useful to society is really tough, so we shouldn't assume we can figure it out. But saying they "create thousands of jobs" and "dollars spent do not disappear" isn't a good argument for these things.