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NASA's Mars Science Laboratory |OT| 2,000 Pounds of Science!

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patrickthehedgehog

Member
Bisnic said:
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.
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I don't mean kickstart in that way, but I'd seriously be willing to drop some bucks from every paycheck like I used to do with United Way at my old job. If something like NASA SUPPORT was an option upon employment I'm sure a lot of people would be willing to give it a shake. Many people are very romantic about exploring space. Anything would help I'd imagine.
 
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ckohler

Member
When coverage should begin (or had begun) on Nasa TV, TWiT.tv, etc:

t1344229200z1.png
 
K

Kaako

Felium Defensor
So I just found out that we're hosting the direct footage that comes from this baby come landing time. F YEAAAAH!
 
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KillerMan91

Member
It just somehow blows my mind in negative way that we as humanity spend hundreds and hundreds of billions annually in military and weapons around the world and at the same time so little in space exploration. Damn shame. Hopefully this operation will be success.
 
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RiverBed

Banned
I just bought a ticket for Planetfest in Pasadena. Curiosity will be landing around 10:30 pm Sunday PDT! There will be a host of speakers from NASA, JPL and others and they'll have a life-sized model of Curiosity to boot! It will be an extremely exciting Sunday indeed!

I just HOPE it won't end in tears. 1/3 of Mars missions end in failure...
 
Rentahamster

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Log4Girlz said:
Man, imagine what Nasa could do if its budget was like, 100 billion dollars a year.
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With the right management and support, great things.

At the very least, it would probably be money better spent and have a greater ROI than a lot of the stuff we currently waste tax money on.
 
P

Partial Gamification

Banned
Rentahamster said:
With the right management and support, great things.
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Great things indeed.

To get up on the soapbox and plea for interested individuals to advocate when and where they can for both this organization and its mission; it is all of our responsibilities to do what we can. It doesn't have to be a letter writing campaign or fund raising, just sharing the passion of exploration when the opportunity presents itself. My short spiel.


Also, Google Earth has the option to toggle between Earth/Moon/Mars/Space and is a must-see for cartophiles.
 
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AstroNut325

Member
Partial Gamification said:
I'm jealous! I'll be there in spirirt. You are going to have a blast!
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Ditto. I wish I could go. But with a newborn baby it would be very difficult.

RiverBed said:
I just bought a ticket for Planetfest in Pasadena. Curiosity will be landing around 10:30 pm Sunday PDT! There will be a host of speakers from NASA, JPL and others and they'll have a life-sized model of Curiosity to boot! It will be an extremely exciting Sunday indeed!

I just HOPE it won't end in tears. 1/3 of Mars missions end in failure...
Click to expand...

If there is one group of people who can pull this off it's JPL.
info20120801-full.jpg
Click to expand...
 
C

ConfusingJazz

Member
ElectricBlue187 said:
no its not. war cannot create wealth only destroy it. space exploration opens up paths to new resources which can be used to create wealth.
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Dude, I love space more then war and all, but its super profitable if done right. I believe the old saying is "If you want to your fortune, invent something to help those fool Europeans kill each other more quickly"
 
E

ElectricBlue187

Member
ConfusingJazz said:
Dude, I love space more then war and all, but its super profitable if done right. I believe the old saying is "If you want to your fortune, invent something to help those fool Europeans kill each other more quickly"
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The graph was worldwide so I was talking about the whole world. Sure its profitable for a bomb maker in the US to sell bombs to the UK to drop on Germany but for the entirety of the world there is a loss of wealth every time a bomb is dropped, capital is destroyed and the whole world is that much poorer. "War is profitable" is a broken window fallacy.
 
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WeAreStarStuff

Member
Ran the READ function on my BBG this morning. Check out the 7th most read story this morning by all traders and the financial industry as a whole. Was glad to see there is still some hope left in my industry.


read.png



P.S. BBG stands for Bloomberg Terminal.
 
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WeAreStarStuff

Member
F

Feature

Banned
Imagine kinect being used to actually land the thing. You'll have to start waving your arms 20 minutes beforehand because of the 15 minute delay for it to reach the rover.
 
Insane Metal

Insane Metal

Member
RiverBed said:
Don't know where to post this:
This is a documentary about how scientists imagine alien life (extremely watered down and 'Hollywood-ed' for general consumption, but still extremely fascinating). It is stimulating to see how 'alien' alien life can be and still be within the laws of nature/physics. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNLfNe12BKE&feature=related
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I recommend this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKjr5OFqhLo :)


birdcity said:
Yes! I had posted a couple days ago hoping that MRO captured a picture of Curiosity during EDL like it did with Phoenix in that amazing photo, and it looks like they are planning on doing it with HiRISE and MRO. :D

http://www.universetoday.com/96576/hirise-camera-to-attempt-imaging-curiositys-descent-to-mars/
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Awesome!!
 
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Neuromancer

Member
Feature said:
Imagine kinect being used to actually land the thing. You'll have to start waving your arms 20 minutes beforehand because of the 15 minute delay for it to reach the rover.
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LOL

Seriously though the Kinect game is all right, especially the landing sequence at the very end where you're using each arm to control the thrust on the jets to land safely. Of course it is misleading since the Kinect game makes it seem as though someone is controlling the thing remotely the whole time which as ckohler says is not the case.
 
Insane Metal

Insane Metal

Member
Oh man, I'm seriously hyped!

I hope everything goes ok. This mission is really significant, we need to get all possible data through Curiosity.
 
B

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
Imagine if some meteorite was to hit it before it could reach its destination.

1 chance in 1 billion i know, but that would be terribly sad and hilarious at the same time.
 
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AstroNut325

Member
Neuromancer said:
LOL

Seriously though the Kinect game is all right, especially the landing sequence at the very end where you're using each arm to control the thrust on the jets to land safely. Of course it is misleading since the Kinect game makes it seem as though someone is controlling the thing remotely the whole time which as ckohler says is not the case.
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It would be really entertaining if the Kinect game basically recorded your expected maneuvers and had you wait 15 minutes to see how it pans out! The frustration, the angst, and desire to smash everything in sight because you're 20th attempt was completely off the mark!
 
Fox Mulder

Fox Mulder

Member
KillerMan91 said:
It just somehow blows my mind in negative way that we as humanity spend hundreds and hundreds of billions annually in military and weapons around the world and at the same time so little in space exploration. Damn shame. Hopefully this operation will be success.
Click to expand...

While I agree that space exploration deserves more funding, R&D on technology to support the military has led to many things we use today. The technology to even get into space was largely born from military interests.
 
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WeAreStarStuff

Member
bkfount said:
While I agree that space exploration deserves more funding, R&D on technology to support the military has led to many things we use today. The technology to even get into space was largely born from military interests.
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Yes, but you don't need to invest in military for that. You just invest in space in the first place. What does it say about a species that spends so much money on destroying itself? How utterly sophomoric we would appear to a more advanced society.
 
Fox Mulder

Fox Mulder

Member
Bisnic said:
Imagine if some meteorite was to hit it before it could reach its destination.

1 chance in 1 billion i know, but that would be terribly sad and hilarious at the same time.
Click to expand...

It would be worse if it crashed, and is more likely to happen than some freak thing.

The engineering and planning this took to land perfectly probably won't get the appreciation by the public it deserves, but we'd have to hear more crying about wasting money on pointless space missions if this fails.
 
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Parch

Member
Military failure doesn't stop military funding, but if this ends up being a pile of space junk on Mars, you can bet that failure will be used to further cripple space exploration funding.
This needs to work.
 
T

The_Super_Inframan

"the journey to a thousand games ends with bad rats. ~Lao Tzu" ~Gabe Newell
The landing sequence is awesome, i really hope everything goes right...

oh, and this thread reminded me of this xkcd comic

DL7Ym.png

http://xkcd.com/695/

the rovers are though little (in this case not so little) troopers *sheds a tear*
 
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