The Best of Updates, the Worst of Updates

[krpalmer]

Checking the news, I saw a report the latest Chinese lunar probe launched just a few days ago had touched down on the Moon, there to retrieve samples and rocket them back to Earth for the first time since the 1970s. At the same time, though, I also saw an update that, following announcements the falling-apart Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico would have to be decommissioned, its suspended equipment all crashed into the dish by itself. Some unfortunate thoughts about the old comments that prowess in space is to be taken as a demonstration of competence on Earth did come to mind, even if I remembered noticing a few comments building up the Soviet Union’s robust and long-used space technology at the very beginning of the 1990s (and, when NASA did begin cooperating with the Russians towards the end of that decade, all of a sudden the Russians were being accused of foot-dragging incompetence themselves). After that, though, I then noticed dewline passing on comments about the possibility of not just abandoning the Arecibo site.