NASA, European Space Agency Want To Go To Mars 129
coondoggie writes "NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are aiming to cooperate on all manner of robotic orbiters, landers and exploration devices for a future trip to Mars. Specifically, NASA and ESA recently agreed to consider the establishment of a new joint initiative to define and implement their scientific, programmatic, and technological goals for the exploration of Mars. The program would focus on several launch opportunities with landers and orbiters conducting astrobiological, geological, geophysical, climatological, and other high-priority investigations and aiming at returning samples from Mars in the mid-2020s."
Re:Cooperation (Score:4, Informative)
I doubt it. ESA will defenitely work with SI units. And I assume NASA wants to use their old units for their old stuff. However, if they cooperate on a component level, this should not be a big problem as long as the systems are not integrated. For example rocket from NASA and rover from ESA.
NASA has used Metric for a long, long time now. It was a subcontractor who used Imperial that screwed up the Mars lander.
Congratulations (Score:3, Informative)
Your wholly invented figures have surely disproven his claim. And your specious* reference to parable of the broken window hammers it home.
*The point of the parable is that net economic gain of an action is the sum of the gross economic gain (work for the glazier) and the economic cost (reduced spending power of the cobbler), and therefore an action with an economic cost equal or greater than its gross gain is a net loss. Outside of your invented figures, you have not demonstrated this.