Peterthumpa
Member
Holy fucking shit. I'm actually gonna watch "live" the real touchdown using this.
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NASA's Mars Science Laboratory |OT| 2,000 Pounds of Science!
- Thread starter DrForester
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Holy fucking shit. I'm actually gonna watch "live" the real touchdown using this.
Edmond Dantès
Dantès the White
BBC Mission to Mars documentary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oeDXCoKg_A
Full episode will be uploaded soon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oeDXCoKg_A
Full episode will be uploaded soon.
I'm not sure its really live though, there is only 1000 miles left and it goes down very fast, and its supposed to land on August 6th? What?
Edit : nvm im dumb.
Neuromancer
Member
Yeah I thought it would take like 5 minutes before we would even know if it landed safely.
Graphics Horse
Member
Is it true that there is a small person inside the rover?
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
Well it is for vaporizing top layers of rock. Probably a very small area, I'd imagine you could get a burn from it, but it's probably be near microscopic in size.
Great Poster
Member
ElectricBlue187
Member
If Curiosity gets damaged before it even gets a chance to open its eyes, I will literally cry and sob! What a daring a bold landing method.
I am curious as to why they didn't use Spirit's landing approach? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyktvC7w7Js
Is it because Curiosity is a much larger vehicle?
I am curious as to why they didn't use Spirit's landing approach? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyktvC7w7Js
Is it because Curiosity is a much larger vehicle?
ElectricBlue187
Member
yes its as big as a car. Air bags can't keep it from being damaged
maquiladora
Member
Yes, that is exactly why they are not using the airbag method.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1coV7XqE1M&feature=related
The two main attractions to this mission are the landing and Curiosity itself. Watch the video to see a little more of Curiosity. I love the packaging stage.
The two main attractions to this mission are the landing and Curiosity itself. Watch the video to see a little more of Curiosity. I love the packaging stage.
timetokill
Banned
This x1,000,000
Joel Was Right
Member
Edmond Dantès;40484487 said:
Excellent documentary. I learnt a lot. Rio Tinto is extraordinary
Well, if this thing fails to land at least we'll know why. Aliens shot it out of the sky because they deemed it a threat. Btw, heres that sunset photo in a larger size
Saw this on Twitter. Who the hell is in Times Square on a Sunday night at 1am in the morning!? NO ONE.
That is the Mass Effect map music in Horizon, isn't it? I heard it and was trying to remember what movie it was from, then remembered it's from Mass Effect.
There's some cool guys working for BBC.
There's some cool guys working for BBC.
Graphics Horse
Member
Well, if this thing fails to land at least we'll know why. Aliens shot it out of the sky because they deemed it a threat. Btw, heres that sunset photo in a larger size
That's a new one, Blue sky on Mars.
AstroNut325
Member
That and we need to get in the habit of doing soft landings. You can't bounce a vehicle with people and highly sophisticated equipment in it.
Didn't you see Prometheus? Jeez.
astroturfing
Member
yeah man, ive heard so much good music in BBC documentaries (especially Horizon)... like Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, Brian Eno etc. they got some good taste. there was something that really surprised me.. im almost sure it was videogame music too. damn i cant remember what it was :/
Mackenzie 92
Member
Shame on NASA for being poorly managed. I'm all for a big budget space program, but NASA needs some new direction and focus.
By the way there is a free kinect game on 360 for this where you try to land using gestures, if anyone is really bored.
Rekall (sic).
In this latest episode about the rover, I swear that's the music from Mass Effect playing throughout it.
Hahaha, they were really stupid scientists. Still has goddamn good art and enjoyable overall.
It was definitely Mass Effect galaxy map music. BBC really has top notch people in the industry.
GAF. There was a NY GAF meet up a couple months ago where they all went to Times Square at, like, 2 AM to goof around on the Time Square web cams.
Are you sure it was cut? I thought there was a budget freeze.
AstroNut325
Member
I know for a fact that JPL (people who designed, engineered and made Curiosity) got a budget cut this year and will be cut again next year.
NASA gets a new direction and focus pretty much every single time there's a new President elected. Try to manage any long-term space, exploration, or new technology project that can potentially be gone in 8 years at best, 4 years at worst.
I'll be watching this eagerly. I do mainly electronics for aeronautics work, but just had some of my electronics fly on the IRVE-3 rocket through the HIAD program last week and know how intense it can be watching an experiment or anything of this magnitude launch/land and really hoping you've dotted all your 'i's and crossed all you 't's.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
Not NASA's fault that no President has really had a good focus for the program. Oddly enough the one who gave NASA the most focus was Bush II after the Columbia disaster. Obama came in and pretty much told them to scrap 7 years of research and development to "focus" of his incredibly ambiguous goals.
This is very cool.
It's not just the President's lack of focus however. Congress is constantly fighting the executive budget proposals for NASA (in good ways and bad ways) which makes moving firmly in a single direction incredibly hard. The Obama administration asked for $800 million for CCiCap this year and to keep the competition open, Congress only approved $270 million wanted to down select to one provider, and it took months to reach the mediocre agreement of $520 million for 2.5 providers. The Obama administration cancelled the Constellation Program per the Augustine Commissions recommendation and wanted to boost the funding for COTS and CCDev and Congress forced the development of the SLS (which is expected to cost $18 billion through development with a lifetime cost of $41 billion through 2025). At the same time, the recent budget proposal from the White House keeps the total NASA budget the same while cutting massively from the planetary sciences and Congress is looking to restore the funding. It's always a constant struggle between the two branches which is not a very good way to run a space program (IMO).
I love this.I hope MRO is able to snap a picture of Curiosity during EDL like it did with Phoenix.
Amazing photo:
Thanks, I had never seen this image.
Man on Mars + stations on the Moon + more probes sent to distant planets.
I remember back in the 90s(or was it 80s?) when people were estimating humans to be on Mars around 2020 or maybe 2030 at worst... yeah right, not at this rate. We'd be lucky to see this before i die of old age, which is like in 50+ years.
To Bowdz's point, imagine what they could do if they just had a firm budget and some autonomy.
I got really into space policy a few years ago and I was shocked at the amount of time and money that is wasted due to irresponsible oversight. Promising project that are run (and funded) for a couple years and then canceled because some politician favors a different project that will bring money to their district. That's actually the really shocking thing when you get down to the details: most of the votes for NASA funding comes from politicians who are trying to secure local money. That works both ways though. The reason that NASA's budget is even as big as it is is largely thanks to the self-interested politicians.
astroturfing
Member
the whole world would love America.
Oh so Mars is terraformed already?
I'm not even that ambitious. I'm just still bitter that JIMO got canceled:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jimo/
JIMO was one of canceled missions from the early 2000s. It would have explored three of Jupiters moons (Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) each of which might have surface oceans containing the ingredients for life. Not only that, it was to be propelled by Nuclear Electric Ion Drive and could have served as a test platform for the propulsion technology to eventually take humans to Mars and beyond. This is the first thing I think of whenever NASA's budget is mentioned.
Bitter tears...
That's the sound stage they're going to fake the landing with.
Partial Gamification
Banned
This whole project just makes me feel good. I love: the links in this thread; the comments; and the pictures. A couple of nights ago, I was outside a local watering hole sitting with a friend, explaining to them the ”Seven Minutes of Terror” and just happened to notice a bright object in the horizon. That awesome star-map mobile-app verified it was Mars, and we had one of those synchronistic epiphanies. I ended up taking about Curiosity with three different groups of people throughout the night. It is a great conversation topic and fans of the program need to build the hype when and where they can. Every time that the sky-crane detaches the rover and blasts off to avoid collision, in the video, I'm completely, like: “w-t-f-” and just amazed and happy at the same time.
Here's info anyone interested in Space Law might enjoy:
Loophole Could Allow Private Land Claims on Other Worlds
For Sale: Moon and Mars
Space Settlement Institute
Space Law lectures:
The Progressive Development of International Space Law by the United Nations
The Law of Outer Space in the General Legal Field
(Commonality and Particularities)
Here's info anyone interested in Space Law might enjoy:
Loophole Could Allow Private Land Claims on Other Worlds
For Sale: Moon and Mars
Space Settlement Institute
Space Law lectures:
The Progressive Development of International Space Law by the United Nations
The Law of Outer Space in the General Legal Field
(Commonality and Particularities)
patrickthehedgehog
Member
This sort of makes me wonder why there isn't a way to "kickstart" NASA programs. I'd happily donate the cost of a monthly Netflix streaming subscription to help fun projects that I'm interested in. Hell, I'd be happy to send them that money and let them decide what projects to do for that matter...
Probably because they cost hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars? Can you really "kickstart" something worth that much?
The Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity project itself cost 2.5 billions just to give an idea.
Whenever people like Neil deGrasse Tyson talk about NASA funding they always say things like 'for $.25 a day for each person in America we could do X' but that math obviously fall apart quickly if you aren't factoring in a share for all 300 million people in America.
Yeah, sort of depressing. I would definitely be willing to contribute a fairly large amount of money towards our space efforts if it could actually make a difference.
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