We can build these things that last that long, in more harsh environments than here on earth, and I can not get more then 5-10 years life out of my car, something always breaks about every year, And, this thing can send a signal back over 9.7 billion miles away and I can barely get decent cell reception here on Earth !
I do hope everyone appreciates the cost of space exploration, if left up to capitalism that depends on investment returns (and I like a competitive capital industry, within limits), we would never have radar, microwaves, cell phones, etc, all developed out of the necessity to push beyond the normal limits of thinking we know in order to accomplish the yet undiscovered, although some of that came out of war time initiatives, I would rather spend the money in space than in war. Being able to put satellites in orbit and have better weather forecasting, saving lives, analyzing affects on our ozone so we can better understand how to protect our planet in the future. All this stuff has and will benefit man kind way beyond the dollar costs we put into it today. We need to better fund this kind of stuff instead of wars (unless necessary and only long as needed). instead we fund several nations military, even those that are opposing each other, then have to go to others country and fight the people we once supported. We spend over 1.9 billion to help fund Egypt’s military, and then spend a lot to fund Israel’s military too, hypocrites.
OK, enough of the soapbox, just gets me angry to see those idiots in Washington spend our tax dollars where should not be, then cut funding to other beneficial things, cut our own military down to less that before WWII, and still pay out the nose to fund others military and we have people still staving over here !
Developments from space exploration have benefited the private sector with more technologies that have translated to more jobs than anything else since we start going to space.
We need more…..