I feel bad for people who can't enjoy the space program because they're mad about the obscene amount of money spent on it. It must be how people feel bad for me because I can't enjoy meat, knowing what goes into that. However, I still have thousands and thousands of wonderful things to eat, whereas the people with space issues are stuck fuming with naked-eye planet smudges.
I should care about the huge amount of money we spend on missions that don't seem to have everyday practicality (unlike, say, those leading to communication satellite development) when those funds could be used on people to give them food and nice clothes for job interviews and extra tutoring in math or, heck, just enough teachers in the first place. I get that.
However, I have this firm belief that, if the space budgets monies were freed up, none of the "deserving poor" would ever see a dime. So, I don't worry about it. Meanwhile, I try to do good deeds that I can see actually happen.
Is my position justified yet? Who cares -- on to Phoebe.
My mother was going to name me Phoebe, but she was afraid people would think that was too weird. So, she named me Shari, pronouncing it Shaaaari, which everyone immediately started pronouncing as Shehhhhrrrrry, and all of my life I had to hear my mother telling me about how my name was really Shaaaari but it was a losing battle to stop the Shehhhhrrrrry, so I just went along with Shehhhhrrrrry until I was old enough to say "this is stupid, this is not my name, it doesn't even make sense!"
And now my social network is global enough to where most of my (new) friends pronounce it Shaaaari without having to be told, but I still have to deal with people (read: always Americans, often Texans) making snarky comments, like having me spell my name because Shaaaari isn't a natural Southern Twang Sound, and then, because many Sharis have been indoctrinated to believe that they are Shehhhhrrrrrys and ruin it for the rest of us, these people say "Oh, so it's just your fancy version of Shehhhhrrrrry" or "Oh, so it really is Shehhhhrrrrry" and then I (mentally) smack them upside the head for being so phonetically-challenged, all the while thinking that "Phoebe" would surely have been a far less violent moniker.
Not that (check out this segue!) Phoebe has not been a party to violence, as we've so recently seen with Saturn's battered outer sphere in its wave to the Cassini cameras.
Some fast Phoebe facts: She was discovered in 1898. Her orbit is backwards. Like the (far more mysterious, if you ask me) Hyperion, her rotation is off. Phoebe is named for one of the Titans in Greek mythology. This makes sense because Saturn was the leader of the Titans (except it was in Roman mythology, but you know how interchangeable those gods get). Phoebe orbits Saturn -- perfect theme-scheme, no? Except, gee, they really bailed out when they named Titan, Saturn's largest moon. It's like naming a child "American" or something.
I apologize right now to anyone named "American." Possibly your mother was also just trying to spare you life with a "weird" name like "Phoebe."
Of all the planet-moon nomenclatures, you can't beat Jupiter (Zeus) and his (must we say "its"?) moons that are all named after the god's lovers. Saturn has no consistency in this regard, really. Pan? Pan? Pan is not a Titan. Pan is a fey pipe-blowing goatie. Pan is also a glorified chunk of ring debris that probably only gets to be a moon because we let Mars' piddly orbiting asteroids Phobos and Deimos be moons. (And now you know how I named my hamsters.)
But, Pan was discovered in 1990, so you just have to blow it off as so much proof of a society in decay. (At least until I'm twenty or so years older and come to regard the 90s as part of the troubled-but-fundamentally-good old days before everything went to hell.)
Really, we don't even have to wait that long, because the names for the Saturnine moons discovered in 2000 and since have been even less pleasing. Mundilfari? Okay, I grant that it's the name of a giant, and I appreciate that it fits the theme in that regard. It is therefore much better than Pan so far as being on topic, but it's Norse! I like Nordic tales as much as anyone (more, perhaps), but we can't have Vikings in our classical skies! Next thing you know, they'll be busing in the Eskimos!
Except, oops, that already happened with several other moon names. Again, they're called after giants, so that's good. However, what's up with the Gallic names, such as Albiorix, the God of Tribal Unity?
Yes, yes, I know that there is a severe shortage of Greek and Roman names for newly discovered objects. I'm just unhappy because it doesn't seem right to have Paaliaq hobknobbing with everyone's favourite shepherd moon, Epimetheus. (Or maybe you prefer some other shepherd moon. Leave a comment if so.)
I know I'm going to get some emails calling me a "racist" from people who haven't looked that word up in the dictionary. Look, I'm not saying there shouldn't be any Norse or Inuit celestial bodies, just that it feels wrong to insert them around Saturn and such. It's like having Tomorrowland in the middle of Frontierland -- so wrong! Splash Mountain and Space Mountain are fine attractions with a common heritage, but you cannot take Br'er Rabbit in your rocket pod and maintain the mood of either, you just can't.
(Yes, I know that Plessy v. The Intergalactic Council was overturned in 1954.)
But back to lovely Phoebe, hanging back on the fringes of Saturn's gravitational pull like a pock-marked wallflower. Mike sent me some "way better Phoebe photos" while I was sleeping. I rather like this photo from NASA called Phoebe's Surprise. (Oh, she's so coy!) I've read in recent news (with the exact link even more recently lost) that they're thinking of scrapping the idea of Miss Phebes as a captured asteroid and reclassifying her as possibly a captured comet.
Wow, how mad would you be if you were a comet and were captured while joy-riding around your ellipsis? Much madder than an asteroid -- we know they're all looking for a big sugar planet to take care of them.
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