There is a lunar experiment still working long after the last Apollo mission returned to Earth - a simple set of mirrors that reflect a laser emission from Earth designed to study the dynamics of the Earth-Moon relationship. The scientist who conceived this simple idea designed and built a prototype for $5,000 including labour. NASA, however, demanded that it contracted for the final product at a cost of $3m - a classic example of gold plating by a government customer that brought you the $300 spanner! To Freeman Dyson, writing in the October 2016 edition of the New York Review of Books, this is a fine example of 'Big Space' - the heavily bureaucratic, large-scale space mission that still dominates not only the US but also other institutional space programmes.
展开▼
