Wednesday, August 27, 2008

56 and Counting

The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 for a 90-day mission. Fifty-six months later, they are still at it. Spirit survived winter and it looks as if Opportunity will be able to climb back out of the crater that it has been working in for most of a year. Not that time and the harsh environment hasn't taken their toll. The list of malfunctions on both rovers continues to grow. But consider this; what would happen to a car that had no maintenance done on it other than dumping in more gas while being driven off-road in the desert for nearly five years?

Too bad we can't get this sort of return-on-investment for the tax dollars we are spending on things like education and killing Iraqis.

No comments: