I went to see the launch back in November 2011.
Good stuff.
Good stuff.
Another Mars landing
- Thread starter Venture
- Start date
It's pretty cool that they can fire a vehicle the size of a mini cooper in to space and it travels solely on velocity from launch and a bunch of other magic that I can't comprehend, travels for 8 months and hits a planet in the middle of space, and a little space craft hovers above the planet and lowers down the mini cooper size vehicle.
I didn't realize it was that large. Wonder how long before we have a small RC vehicle replica to play with on planet earth. Use your quad rotor drone to drop it into your neighbor's yard and cause lots of fun neighborhood mayhem!coastie said:
Or a conversion kit for your own Mini Cooper!
Seriously though, this is really cool that we're dropping these smart robots onto another planet. The many known problems of prolonged human space flight make this our present best option for gathering intel on worlds within our technical reach.
Does anyone know which (any?) channel is following this? This thing has got to be sending back data just about 24/7.
This is like the varsity league of those rc robot competitions on taxpayer money. Maybe they will find evidence of huge gold deposits and dig it up and fly it home, pay off the cost of this project. ::008:: Looking for life on Mars while life on Planet Earth hangs in the balance.
NasaTV is the most up-to-date, but it is about the most boring coverage you could possibly watch - they spend most of the time re-hashing and congratulating themselves. If Nasa wants continued support of taxpayer dollars, then need to do a little more PR work and package their missions for broader appeal to the masses.20valves said:
I think they're now going to spend a week or so just doing system checkouts.
In this vein, I think the space agencies are missing the boat by continuing to do pure science missions without feeding our innate desire as humans to want to experience and explore another world. Instead of a $3B mission to dig up rocks and try and look for pre-cursors of life (which I absolutely guarantee will result in ambiguous results) how about building a vehicle that covers much longer distances (possibly even flies in the Martian atmosphere) that sends back live high-res pictures broadcast over TV and the internet? One that would let us get some type of virtual experience of what it is like to be on Mars?
While celebrating the landing, the guys at mission control were talking about what a bargain this mission was - how it only cost $7 per US citizen to fund the mission. I thought that was a pretty high number actually. I like science as much as the next guy, but I'm not sure most Americans, given the choice, would be willing to shell out $7 for every man, woman, and child just to support a single pure science mission on Mars.
- Mark
Don in Lodi
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One of the head honchos was rattling on about this and that this morning and mentioned that for less than seven dollars per person... maybe in all the nations involved?... seven dollars each sent the Rover on it's way. Pretty cheap, huh. OHoundman said:
I'm not sure how much fun and mayhem can be had at a cruising speed of 4cm/sec. It's not fast because it's being controlled from here, with a 14-minute lag, and there is always a risk of running it into a ditch if they are going too fast.20valves said:
I think it IS pretty cheap actually. Apart from the pure science aspect of it (things we learn may help us in the future), think of all the kids who might be inspired to study engineering or astrophysics or whatever. This generation could be the ones LANDING on Mars - if these missions go well, predictions are for a manned mission by 2030... so a kid seeing this now in elementary school could be on board that ship.markjenn said:
True it's a lot of money - but spend the same money on earth and the things you fix are only incremental and barely noticible - fix the roads, whatever - necessary but hardly inspirational to the next generation. It's worth it...
Hard to compare things like this. (Or worse, try and compare the cost of this entire mission with a single B1 bomber or a few F-22 fighters.)dcstrom said:
I'm in support of Nasa getting a good chuck of the budget and I agree it is worth $7 to me, but I think if Nasa is going to survive the ruthless budget-cutting this nation is going to endure (either by choice or by being forced through economic collapse) it needs to find broader appeal. If a basically pure science geology mission would inspire some kids, imagine what HD images of a vehicle flying through the canyons of Mars would inspire.
I also think there is a sound rationale for broad-survey missions rather than drill-down missions. You wouldn't learn very much about Earth if you were forced to make a single landing and then confine explorations to an area a few miles square. Again, the pure science folks wanting to answer the question of whether life has existed on Mars have to do the drill-down mission. And if I thought we were going to get a good answer, I'd could see this much effort on this question. But I don't think we will get a good answer. It's too hard a problem and will only be answered by tens of missions which I don't think we can afford. Casting a wider net would yield answers to question we haven't even thought of yet.
- Mark
Give me $2,500,000,000.10c and I'll have delivered to your door in 9 months. I might even get it down to 450lbs for you ::024::20valves said:This thing sets up a whole new series of comparative statements:
"If we can send a car to Mars, why can't we ______________"
1. Produce a 475 pound Super Tenere ::008::
Already sort of done...markjenn said:
http://www.google.com/mars/
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/index.cfm?ShowLandingPage=No
[174.123 Terra bits of hi res front page material received to date]
It's a conspiracy Mark.
No one has figured it out yet but Curiosity is a just a Street view Car supplied by Google. All the rest is a bullshit cover story.
Look what is coming soon in Hi Res..
Anyone guess what this is?
Lots more available at the site.
Just some examples
And here it is...
On it's way down...
And they found the jettisoned heat shield on its way down as well. ;D
On it's way down...
And they found the jettisoned heat shield on its way down as well. ;D
Costs 7 buck per US citizen? Last time I checked my two young daughters paid ZERO to any agency. The effin country is broke and we are spending money so a VERY FEW people can truly benefit from all of this. The problem with this is that those two young daughters will pay a hell of a lot more than 7 dollars for even a gallon of water after most of us are gone if people right here don't figure out how to clear up debt first and manage governmental affairs. So far all this has produced is a feeling of fascination..What would be as great as the moon landing(or this latest Mars thing) would be the day that the government said that the national debt has been paid off, that all incoming flow of means will now go to infrastructure construction and redesign, for research of those projects. Fund ways to figure out what we are gonna do to lessen the impact of the day that the last drop of oil will be sucked out of the ground. Now that would be fascinating. Then whatever.. go land on Mars. ::009::
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Finding large deposits of precious substances on Mars would be the catalyst for true space exploration. The private sector would start throwing gobs of money at spaceflight and space mining. It's the underlying premise for a lot of Sci-fi movies. Alien among them.Houndman said:
I can't think of anything "precious" enough at the moment that would warrant the cost of getting there, mining the stuff, then bringing it back. Cost would be truly astronomical.Venture said:
Now maybe if it was the "unobtainium" from Avatar that would be a different proposition...
Yea it would be a moot piont to mine. Either there isnt enough that would pay for itself or the deposit would be so big that the value here on Earth would go down considerably, making it no longer rare.
???Houndman said:
It's true though. I could piss a whole lot of people off by talking about the HUGE amount spent on blowing shit up compared to this little trip. It cost about 10 times what the AVATAR film cost to make. I don't think AVATAR will make any lasting contribution to mankind or 10 big films. I wonder what would happen if HALF the money that was spent on blowing shit up was diverted to infrastructure and NASA got a funding boost to work on ENERGY solutions. Maybe they would have to go and work at NREL instead.
But at the same time, this would require a big change in culture in the Country and that usually only happens if people feel threatened which means the shit has to hit the fan first. I would say it has in the form of some "interesting" weather at the moment over there but that will pass momentarily and things will go back to normal.
Normal is what people like as long as they can drag it out.
Where I live their is a baby step in place trying to do something and that baby step has got everyone in a lather about how doomed we all are with a 1% week increase in electricity costs. Funny how the 50% infrastructure cost increases never bothered anyone though.
Or the many other costs associated with duopoly food pricing, or the large cost increases in petrol prices.
It does sound like people will cop anything as long as it fits into their own belief and culture paradigms. That is the biggest hurdle of all. The longer you wait the harder it gets. 40 years wasted so far....
Time to Deliver