>> I must admit, I've often wondered where the hell they got the money to 
>> build Hubble, given that once it's built it generates no income...
> 
> It's a tiny, tiny percentage of the cost of anything else. There's only 
> one Hubble, so it can get pretty expensive before you have to worry 
> about it becoming anywhere near "expensive" in government terms.

Are you saying Hubble is government-funded?

Why would they d-- oh, wait, they're a government. Silly me...

>> I'm not understanding what you're trying to say.
> 
> I'm saying, how do you build a simulator and be sure the simulation is 
> correct enough?

Compare it to one of the seventy-eight billion other simulators that 
already exist?

>> I'm aware that there are lots of problems in science and mathematics 
>> which are unsolved, but I was under the impression that things as 
>> mundane as figuring out what shape a wing needs to be are not amoung 
>> them.
> 
> Figuring out how far away the detectors in the LHC have to be from the 
> collision? Figuring out a good antenna shape for an 802.11x 397MBps 
> wireless router? Figuring out the right shape for the wing of an orbital 
> ship that's going to be coming back into the atmosphere at 35x the speed 
> of sound?

Indeed. I would have expected these to all be solved problems.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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