At this point in history, with the economies of scale in production from phones etc, surely it's cheaper to put in a colour camera?!
I really don't get why my original post is downvoted and being disputed. It seems such a basic point.. It such an oversight on the part of NASA, it borders on intentional.
This is why you are being downvoted. You clearly do not understand the difficulty of these achievements. Yet you claim NASA is incompetent for doing something literally nobody has ever done before.
A color camera has no scientific value so they didn’t send one. It’s that simple.
Assuming you know more than NASA is rightfully going to earn downvotes. You don’t know more than NASA.
Approach this with an open mind and some curiosity and you’ll get a much warmer response. You might even learn something.
And even if that were the case, do you not think there would be some scientific value to having the photo in colour that it would be worth the risk?
Personally - I think its ridiculous that NASA get so many billions but are unable to put in a decent colour camera. I can't see any acceptable reason for this.
PS first colour photo was in 1890.
PPS I mean 1861! https://www.bbc.com/news/13411083
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe#Instruments
One of the great things about ChatGTP is as a framing point — I can now use it as a standard by which to say: "this thing we all keep rolling our eyes at for its mistakes? It's knows more about this than ${person} does" (sometimes I'm that ${person}, helps point me in the direction of intellectual humility).
It's not "extremely vital", it's just how NASA has been doing things for a good while.
Sometimes ultra perfectionism makes sense.
Sometimes you can aim for an 85% mission success rate and launch 5 probes for half the price a decade earlier.
…Which NASA also does.
That’s the helicopter on Mars, and the first Starship mission.
Which 85% success rate space mission did you pull off?
So you agree with me that it's viable, great.
I guess I should have been more clear that the perfectionism is how NASA almost always operates these days.
> the first Starship mission.
Not NASA.
> Which 85% success rate space mission did you pull off?
What's with this hostility?
All I said is that it's not extremely vital. I didn't even say NASA definitely did anything wrong, just that there are options.