I think this part of the Wikipedia article answers it:
> In order to maintain the fine pointing to focus on stars many light years away, the only moving parts are actuators to align the mirrors and the valves to fire the thrusters. It has no reaction wheels or gyroscopes.
So without "fuel" (reaction mass/gas) for the cold gas thrusters, it likely couldn't hold a stable attitude, and a tumbling spacecraft is likely quite useless because you can't even properly communicate with it, let alone use instruments.
I wonder what considerations went into not attempting to use it as a low-value probe sending out telemetry using a low bandwidth omnidirectional antenna (which I would expect the spacecraft to have for recovery in case something goes wrong). Maybe we already have all the science that would be interesting from other probes, maybe management/budget decisions, maybe it wouldn't work, but it would be interesting to see the decision making.
In this particular case, the goal is to privatize science entirely.
He let violent criminals out of jail. Unsurprisingly, they’re going on to commit crime. It’s wild how similarly the far left and right act when they’re given power; in an alternate universe, Chesa Boudin is pardoning them because abolish prisons or whatever.
or rather, for the reason of speedrunning 1990s Russian oligarchic plundering of the state
They didn't vote for Elon to do it. They also were explicitly lied to by the Trump campaign -- they claimed they didn't know what Project 2025 was and that they had no relationship to it. The minute they won, guess what they said their plan is?
Lying fascists.