[meteorite-list] Phoenix

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi Sterling, all, 

"for a lousy $386 million, which includes the launch
and all tips for room service, You The Taxpayer get a whole
new Mars Mission.  Quit whining.  For comparison, we spend
$343 million each and every day in Iraq doing whatever it is
that we're doing there. Actually, I lied. Phoenix needed an extra $31 million beyond the budget of $386 million and was almost cancelled over it."

I'd rather the money had been spent on the construction and launch of a nice small IR telescope to find the next bit of Carbonaceous Chondrite before it hits and kills a lot of people. I do rather like the two small Mars rovers, though.

I suspect that the end result of Phoenix is going to be that the realization that the surface of Mars is covered by impactites. In the mean time I would appreciate it if people called frozen CO2 "dry ice" instead of "ice", as this confuses the unwashed, and they think its water.

E.P. Grondine
"Man and Impact in the Americas"
"I wipe my bottom with pages from your book" - Andi
"an eccentric and potted ("abbreviated" in Kiwi speak) history... 
too much history and not enough on the impacts"- Eric
"utter nonsense" - "Chief" Jerry "Hawk" Pope
"a failure" - Jenifer Bohlm, wife of David Hatcher Childress
"hundreds of pages of too small type filled with typos and not enough illustrations - Ed
"wonderful - a whole new level" - a shawnee
"I've read every page twice" - a navaho
"I read it twice and keep it on my desk for reference" - an ojibwe
"thank you" - a cherokee