Unknown Unknowns

known knowns: You know it and you know you know it and there is little question about knowing it. These bite you in the ass because you pay all your attention to the next two bullets and tend to know something so well that you ignore the obvious. An example is the conversion from metric to imperial and back. This bit NASA in the butt several years ago to the cost of God know how much.

known unknowns: You know it is there, but your are not sure what it is or how to use it to your advantage. Example: Is there water on Mars? Well, that British device that landed there and never reported back was not water proof. Maybe it landed in a big mud puddle and short circuited.  If you are there to prove water is there or is not there, maybe you need to design your craft to handle both situations. (I'm speculating wildly. I'm sure the Brits did their homework.)

unknown unknowns: Things you have no idea about, but must speculate in order to make contingency plans. Remember the probes from the 70s? One of them was sent off the grid to take a look at Jupiter's rings. For some reason, this craft is traveling faster and faster and is farther away than it should be. We know this for a fact, but no one knows why. It defies all our observations and intelligence. I tried to find a link to this information but I cannot.

Talk about wild speculation. People say that this speed up has to do with the quantum switching. That is, They appear to be speeding up because as they get farther and farther away, the spread of reality cause the cosmos to have to work harder in order to keep up with man observed reality. The universe's CPU is becoming more and more taxed as the population of the Earth increases and the distance we cover increases. Here is hoping for no blue screen of death any time soon.