And this took so long because... ? Be forewarned, there is much factual information in this post but it's a rant.
First of all I am thrilled we're orbiting Jupiter, but come on NASA... we just sent a probe out beyond Pluto, an extensive Jupiter expedition should have been done YEARS ago. I get it that all space discovery is expensive, and Jupiter is really far away, but as a species we are REALLY behind right now. I also know the argument "let's focus on fixing this planet before we go someplace else", but if we don't get off our asses and start doing some serious exploration, we're not going to have any idea where to go, even!
I have always been a space and astronomy nut. Something about a science where there is the possibility of discovering something brand new that's never been seen before is fascinating to me. We also discover something new virtually EVERY time we explore anything... so why aren't we exploring more stuff? New Horizons flew past Pluto in ONE DAY, and do have any idea all the science we were able to do in <24 hours? It's insane! And we're STILL discovering stuff, just today scientists determined that because of the shape and behavior of the informally-named Sputnik Planum there's most likely a 100KM DEEP OCEAN ON PLUTO. What?!?
There are 8 planets in our solar system, did you know the last time we were up close with two of them (Uranus and Neptune) were 1986 and 1989 respectively? Why is that? One of them is tilted completely sideways unlike ANY other planet in our solar system, and the other one has the fastest sustained winds (2000+ mph) we've ever seen and we don't know why. Is this not interesting to us as a species? It's 2016, I figured by now we would at least have probes orbiting all the planets.
Part of the problem is all the planning necessary to launch one of these things. Unfortunately we haven't really developed an assembly line process for building long-distance space probes. As a result, by the time one of our probes visits the places we haven't been to, the technology is on the brink of obsolete. It took 10 years for New Horizons to get to Pluto... it was launched in 2006. Do you remember what sort of digital camera you had in 2006? Pretty sure the megapixels were still in the single digits... most people were still on Windows XP listening to music on our iPod classics... crazy right? And it's that level of technology sophistication that's on a spacecraft hurtling through the outer reaches of our solar system.
It's this type of problem that makes me confident we're doomed as a species. In 2015, the US spent $601 Billion on defense. The NASA budget you ask? $17 billion. Yep, the budget to build and develop sooper-cool jets and explody bombs in this country is 34 times larger than budget for understanding how and why we're here. One final thought on this, the development of the new F-35 fighter plane build by Lockheed Martin cost the US taxpayers $1.5 trillion dollars. Yes, trillion with a T. The cost of sending a probe 4 billion miles from earth and capturing tons of priceless scientific data? 700 million. mic drop
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