*_+$<)%#
Oops, sorry I was speaking Martian.

*promote!

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Saturday, April 21st, 2012 5:11pm PDT - promote requested by legacy0100.

*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by antonye.

Damn, the cassini came with its own orchestra

Amazing!

Getting out there is a much more worthy goal than maintaining the empire. If we (U.S.) don't get our shit together, the rest of the world will leave us here. And they should.

My favorite photo. I remember showing this to a friend. After I pointed out that the little spec on the left side, just above the rings, is Earth, he asked "that's a REAL picture?". It is disappointing to me that pictures such as this are not part of our collective conscience. Pictures like this should be on the front page of every newspaper, magazine, and blog when they are released.

Unfortunately, lacking a more expansive perspective or frame of reference, such pictures probably don't register with people nowadays like they may have 30-40 years ago. Maybe we've been so desensitized, in a way, by relatively routine Shuttle flights and countless videos of numerous, nameless somersaulting astronauts, by movies, video games, incredible CGI worlds and "artist's renderings" that it's difficult to grasp just how incredible these pictures and videos really are. I'm old enough to remember how awed I was while watching the moon landings on TV, and that feeling has never left me. It was an amazing, wonderful, historical event.

And now, here we are over forty years later, still spending trillions of dollars on war and empire while NASA has to pay Russia for rides to the ISS and beg congress for relatively miniscule amounts of money for telescopes and exploration. WTF happened?

We need to get to Mars. A Mars mission, I believe, would jolt this country back to reality about what is truly possible and worthwhile. A new perspective. We aren't doomed as a species, yet. But we can't stay here.

Man, Saturn and Jupiter get all the love.

How 'bout some Mercury and Neptune attention round these parts?

>> ^Fletch:
My favorite photo.

New desktop image, acquired. Cheers.

So what, they couldn't afford colour photography on NASA's budget?

Too short ... It is breathtaking, but really I wish we had more.

We have yet to do SO little.

And..SO MUCH to do with everything we have.