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jedberg
FYI Nasa was given $1.5B more than they asked for in their budget this year, with the new funding bill signed yesterday. I suspect this has a lot to do with it.

Edit: Changed $6B to $1.5B per jakeinspace below.

jakeinspace
I think it was more like 1.5B more, but still, a nice little boost.
jedberg
Yep you're right! The article I read confused the total funding for Earth science last year ($6.2B) for the total increase this year. Edited my comment to reflect the change.
[dead] zahreeley
Change pang chung ching ping pong.

I keep on getting confused with the sounds

ttsda
After this page finishes loading on Safari the scrollbar disappears and it becomes impossible to scroll.
porphyrogene
It loads right away on Firefox! Unfortunately it also immediately loads a full-page ad that obscures all of the page's content to beg for money before I have even had a full second to look at the page.
bobwaycott
Just experienced the same thing. I had a split-second of content before it turned into a cover image with no scroll or content anymore.
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tosca
The earth should not be that small.
chmod775
Nonsense. You can make 2 objects appear pretty much any size relative to each other depending on your viewpoint/what kind of lens you use.

This is especially noticeable in 3D renderings where you can make your "lens" any size/shape you want.

Doesn't hurt to play around in one to see how much of an effect this can have on how we perceive objects.

In this case there's nothing special going on though. The moon is really as far away as it looks.

Earth and moon are separated by a distance roughly equal to 30 earth diameters.

What you may think of are some shots you've seen from moon's surface, which are usually cropped/zoomed in to make earth appear larger.

Waterluvian
>Earth and moon are separated by a distance roughly equal to 30 earth diameters.

I admit I had to look this up simply because it sounds so off. I knew both numbers but never thought about them together. The moon is so much closer than I've always perceived it to be.

thaumasiotes
Tangent about the rover names:

Cháng'é 嫦娥 is the name of a moon goddess. The apostrophe is a syllable divider; you can think of the pronunciation as "chong uh".

Yùtù 玉兔 means "jade rabbit", the rabbit in the moon who pounds medicine for 嫦娥. The rabbit (and the moon) are said to be jade, because in Chinese culture jade is white, not green.