If we were having coffee I’d tell you how exciting it was to watch the live stream of the Mars Perseverance landing this week. Purely by luck I stumbled upon the details about 30 minutes before it was due to land and even joined by the young adult in the house.
How great it was to see it at as the main first news item on the News at 10 rather than another story about politics. The decisions that the bureaucrats are making for the greater good of everyone and everything. It just struck a chord with me in relation to the feats of human kind.
I then saw the cost this morning, roughly $2.7 billion and thought….yikes that is a lot of money and then I saw another article about the prospect of a tunnel between Scotland and Ireland (about 31 miles/50km) and wondered how much that would cost. As it’s merely thoughts at the moment….I thought I’d take a look at the channel tunnel costs and came across the wonders of the world databank….a rabbit hole if ever there was one for the inquisitive mind. The channel tunnel according to this site was $21 billion.
Back to Perseverance and the cost, I came across another site, putting the cost of perseverance in context and like the comparisons. The same amount of money that Disney made in global box office revenue for avengers end game and the amount of money Google makes in 6 days (which is so it’s eye watering it’s unreal). So the cost of perseverance, seems like a steal, spent over a long period of time, funding science and moving us on with wonder.
Obviously these figures and facts are from the internet…it’s got to be true! And I don’t have the budget to check whether the facts are indeed true, I’m just sharing the thoughts!
Managed to re-open the black box this week with an impromptu-start, it’s been nagging at me for some time, an exploration into grannies recipes . When I first started a good while a go (I’m embarrassed to say when) I’d definitely entered into the challenge with rose tinted spectacles. However a certain reality hit this week that the recipes. They are definitely of a time and it’s not due to the units. The ingredients are for items that just don’t feature in our house and I think have long gone out of fashion like corned beef and Campbells condensed soup. Some of the recipes are (I want to use the word terrible) just not to our current tastes like liver creole, salmon pudding and chicken mousse. Discussing this with the boss we then realised it was more about the memories than anything else. I’m going to persevere though, ditching the ones that don’t appeal and writing up the ones that do.
Last weekend we were marching through a foot of snow, today though at 9°C we made a great loop round the citi on the bikes. A few muddy trails…but lots of snow drops. Have a great weekend and hopefully you can get out where you are!
The #WeekendCoffeeShare is an informal weekly link-up hosted by Natalie the Explorer that serves as weekly heart beat and sort of of a mind-dump. Helps me reflect on my week, with a list of achievements, thoughts and rambles normally whilst drinking a beverage probably listening to music.