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Space Science

Spirit Rover Lands Successfully 849

Posted by michael from the airbags-save-lives dept.
So, as I write this, the latest word is: the Spirit rover has landed and NASA has received a signal indicating it landed right-side up (so it shouldn't have any problems in the unfolding process) and will shortly be retracting the protective airbags which kept it from splattering all over the countryside. Y'all can fill in later news in the comments below. There's a nice site with up-to-the-minute text updates.
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Spirit Rover Lands Successfully More

Spirit Rover Lands Successfully

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  • Yay (Score:5, Funny)

    by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:05AM (#7870845)
    Yahoo! We beat the Martian Defense Grid. Up yours Mars!

  • Take that Beagle 2! (Score:5, Funny)

    by benna ( 614220 ) * <mimenarrator@g m a i l .com> on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:06AM (#7870846) Journal
    I have been waiting all week to say that!

    • Re:Take that Beagle 2! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:08AM (#7870877)
      Ah you say that, but today (January 4th) we should know if Beagle 2 is actually alive or not. As I understand it, when The Beagle goes this long without having made successful communication, it starts to transmit all the time. This, coinciding with the oribiter being in the right orbit to pick it up, should let us know whether it's ok or not.

      Fingers crossed!

    • Re:Take that Beagle 2! (Score:5, Funny)

      by ixplodestuff8 ( 699898 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:11AM (#7870907)
      Technically Beagle 2 did make it first. So what if it was shot down by the martians, some of it had to of touched the ground. It should be noted that the US is getting pretty advanced in military technology, I mean getting through the martian's defenses is a great feat, as soon as the next scout lands, we can map out their defense system for holes, and once it's done We'll invade them, no one ever excpects the humans to do the invading, it's always the ET's that invade us, but NOW WE'LL GET THEM mwahahahahahha
      • Technically Beagle 2 did make it first.
        Well, technically Viking [nasa.gov] made first :-)

        Crispin
        ----
        Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
        CTO, Immunix Inc. [immunix.com]

        • http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/chronology_m a rs.html

          Mars 3 - 28 May 1971 - Mars Orbiter/ Lander

          "Mars 3 was launched towards Mars from a Tyazheliy Sputnik (71-049C) Earth orbiting platform. A mid-course correction was made on 8 June. The descent module (71-049F) was released at 09:14 UT on 2 December 1971, 4 hours 35 minutes before reaching Mars. The descent module entered the martian atmosphere at roughly 5.7 km/s. Through aerodynamic braking, parachutes, and retro-rockets, the lander achieved a
    • Take it easy on Beagle 2.

      The primary purpose of Beagle 2 was to find evidence of life on Mars. Spirit Rover's was to find evidence of water. Beagle 2's mission was far more exciting, and I'm disappointed that it seems to have failed.

      That being said, the anti-US "u r teh fat and stupids" rhetoric does get annoying sometimes, but those posters are in the minority.

    • Re:Take that Beagle 2! (Score:5, Funny)

      by baryon351 ( 626717 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:38AM (#7871099)
      It was a very small, very tiny detail that was forgotten on the UK mission.

      Nasa's lander had, among all its technology, a slice of buttered toast, buttered side down, on the bottom of the lander. That's the only way to ensure it landed the correct way up

      The lack of buttered toast is what doomed Beagle2

  • BBC News Mars Rover Report (Score:5, Informative)

    by aheath ( 628369 ) * <[adam.heath] [at] [comcast.net]> on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:06AM (#7870854)
    BBC News Mars Rover Report [bbc.co.uk].

  • NASA TV press conference (Score:5, Informative)

    by dev_alac ( 536560 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:06AM (#7870855)
    Press conference here [nasa.gov] at 9:30pm PST, so in about 25 min.

  • One down...one to go (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sabalon ( 1684 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:07AM (#7870864)
    Hopefully we'll have as good luck in a few weeks.

    Beagle 2 still has a chance when it starts ping flooding on the 5th.

    If we get good enough at these, I'd love to have a rover to drive all over just to find all the missing missions.

  • New device (Score:5, Funny)

    by pen ( 7191 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:07AM (#7870869)
    Windows has detected a new device, "Planet Mars". Please insert the disk marked "Windows CD-ROM" and press OK to continue.

  • Mission Updates (Score:5, Informative)

    by Glendale2x ( 210533 ) <slashdot@ninjam o n k ey.us> on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:08AM (#7870870) Homepage
    Check out the live mission updates on Spaceflight Now:

    http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/status.html [spaceflightnow.com]

    I watched it on NASA TV, too. It was quite an exciting ride through entry and landing. We have the second rover landing to look forward to on January 24.

  • Cool Animation (Score:5, Informative)

    by Unregistered ( 584479 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:08AM (#7870872)
    here [maasdigital.com]

  • (stolen from Fark) (Score:5, Funny)

    by ArsSineArtificio ( 150115 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:11AM (#7870904) Homepage
    First message received from Mars rover: PC LOAD LETTER

  • NASA cable channel (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eggoeater ( 704775 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:13AM (#7870914) Journal
    I'm thrilled they got it there safe....this was the first landing that I watched live on the NASA channel. It had the feel of a local public access program. No one knew how to talk to or look at the camera. I also liked how the "reporter" was pulling people aside for short interviews....like they don't have anything better to do while the Spirit plumits through Mars' atmosphere. It was pretty cool to see all the different reactions in real time though. Good job guys!
    -Steve

  • Search For Beagle (Score:3, Funny)

    by DeadBugs ( 546475 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:14AM (#7870919) Homepage
    Now it would be really cool if it could find Beagle 2.

    Even if it only finds an impact crater :-(

  • In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pizaz ( 594643 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:15AM (#7870927)
    The Martian Information Minister reports that there was no successful landing and that Martian air defenses have engaged and shot down their second UFO in just 10 days.

    He went on to say that their Defense Minister "Marvin" is working on a uber weapon known as the Illudium Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulator that will vanquish the infadels in a single Earth shattering KABOOM!

    -PizaZ
    • "The Martian Information Minister"

      There are no robotic infidels on Mars! Never! The probes have started to commit suicide under the walls of our craters!

  • First Post???? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:16AM (#7870936)
    This would've been first post if it wasn't for the eight minute delay between Mars and Earth.

    Check my site soon for hot, live and free cam shows and exclusive pics.

    Love,

    Spirit

    • Re:First Post???? (Score:5, Funny)

      by rufey ( 683902 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:55AM (#7871190)
      PING spirit.mars.solarsystem 56(84) bytes of data.
      64 bytes from spirit.mars.solarsystem: icmp_seq=0 ttl=239 time=960000 ms

      --- spirit.mars.solarsystem ping statistics ---
      1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 960000 ms
      rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 960000/960000/960000/960000 ms, pipe 2

  • CNN (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:17AM (#7870953)
    I've been waiting all day to hear this in real-time. I wish the guys on CNN would have shut the f**k up. They didn't know what the hell they were talking about. It would have been much better just to hear the NASA people.
    What an idiot. "15 watts worth of information" What the hell does that mean?
    He actually then said "they could only transmit tones, because it was only 15 watts."
    15 watts is enough to transmit from outside our solar system and has nothing to do with the data rate.
    Anyway, it worked! Hurray for NASA and the Taxpayers!

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:20AM (#7870976)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Now my name is on Mars along with 3,551,645 others (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Quizo69 ( 659678 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:21AM (#7870981) Homepage
    http://spacekids.hq.nasa.gov/2003/details.htm

    I put my name and those of my family on a DVD which was attached by metallic LEGO blocks to one side of the lander module.

    It's nice to know that a tiny part of me just achieved a small measure of immortality on another planet in our solar system.

    I wonder if in my lifetime I'll get to take a trip there and visit it in person?

    Quizo69

  • Here it comes! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BTWR ( 540147 ) <americangibor3NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:22AM (#7870997) Homepage Journal
    Cue America and European bashings...

    First off, for the record, I'm American, supported the war (and voted for Gore in 2000), support Israel and I'm often pissed off at how much Anti-Americanism (oftern, but not always, different than anti-bushism) that I have seen lately.

    That being said, I find these stupid NASA/ESA bashings to be so awful. Since 1999, everytime there has been a NASA story on slashdot there have been annoying and STUPID "hey, duh, maybe NASA couldn't tell the difference between metric and English units!" comments. Similarly, after Beagle 2's loss there were equally immature "Ha! Take that Europe!" comments from immature Americans.

    The point is, political stuff aside, these missions benefit EVERYONE, not just the country involved. I mean, don't you WISH the russian lander made it to mars in 1996, or that the nasa polar lander landed successfully, or that Beagle 2 didn't die?

    I mean, thanks to those failures, we are now maybe 150 years (arbitrary number) away from our first pictures of the surface of the ice caps, or the landscapes that Mars 96 or Beagle would have landed in. Now I doubt we'll know what the chemical basis of the polar ice is for another half-century (who knows... maybe they coulda found it to be a pretty high concentration of a substance that would help human missions for fuel, water, etc). I mean, Mars Climate Orbiter's failure lost us daily weather patterns for a foreign celestial body, but at least it gave trolls good ammunition for Anti-American comments.

    So in the end, root for (your side) to win the olympics, be the one whose economy does better or for your countryperson to win the nobel peace prize. That will benefit your country and those are things that you should take pride in. But every scientist in the world has basically equally benefitted from Viking, Venera and Voyager (and especially Spirit/Opportunity - a lot of their data comes straight to the world wide web). Those missions might bring temporary clout and prestige to that country's scientists, but a year later and it's EVERYONE who benefits. That's all I gotta say...

  • PowerPC-powered rover (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bigbluejerk ( 535787 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:25AM (#7871009)
    Cool. The rover is powered by a PowerPC chip:

    "The computer in each Mars Exploration Rover runs with a 32-bit Rad 6000 microprocessor, a radiation-hardened version of the PowerPC chip used in some models of Macintosh computers, operating at a speed of 20 million instructions per second. Onboard memory includes 128 megabytes of random access memory, augmented by 256 megabytes of flash memory and smaller amounts of other non-volatile memory, which allows the system to retain data even without power."

  • Spirit vs Beagle (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Andy Smith ( 55346 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:32AM (#7871053)
    Like many non-US citizens I get sick of Americans thinking that their country is the best and that other countries are less important. But look at what has happened yet again: Where another country failed, the US has succeeded.

    When I hear that the US has successfully landed a craft on Mars, I don't feel particularly surprised. I'd have been more surprised if the mission had failed. But when the Beagle mission (apparently) failed, my reaction was neutral, almost as if I had *expected* it to fail, and a large part of that was due to it being a non-US mission.

    I guess my point is this: If you're one of the people, like me, who is sick of Americans thinking that their country is "all that", then this success should be another reminder that as far as the advancement of science and discovery is concerned, their pride may be less patriotic arrogance and more a statement of fact.

    Oh and I'm not ass-kissing Americans, I'm just feeling a little angry that another country has thrown away another opportunity of doing something important, only for the US to step in and show us how it's done.

    If you want to be the best then actually being the best might be a good place to start. This fundamentally competitive attitude is something that Americans seem to inherently understand and embrace, whereas in other countries it is often frowned upon as distasteful.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:59AM (#7871212)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Spirit vs Beagle (Score:3, Interesting)

      by reallocate ( 142797 )
      >> This fundamentally competitive attitude is something that Americans seem to inherently understand and embrace, whereas in other countries it is often frowned upon as distasteful.

      There's much truth in that. Not to be arrogantly American and jingoistic, but this country really is different, for better or worse.

      I've lived in several countries on four continents outside the U.S. In every country, it was common, and frequent, for someone to ask me if I knew anyone who could help them get a visa to t

    • Re:Spirit vs Beagle (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Andy Smith ( 55346 )
      One quick follow-up to my own comment...

      To say that the Beagle team has "thrown away" an opportunity was too dismissive and I wish I'd phrased it more tactfully. Those people have dedicated years of their lives to achieving something and, unfortunately, didn't succeed on this occasion. They will, of course, have learned a lot along the way.

      I, on the other hand, have done precisely nothing to further science, so I shouldn't be so quick to judge.

    • Re:Spirit vs Beagle (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @02:36AM (#7871394)
      Like many non-US citizens I get sick of Americans thinking that their country is the best and that other countries are less important.

      Andy, man, you have issues. One of a very small number of man-made probes has managed to actually land on another planet, a rare event in history, and you find yourself wrapped up in this "America is best" nonsense. None of this American NASA vs. The Rest of the World BS even occurred to me until I saw your post. The last thing I would have done is lord over the Beagle failure with this landing. If you are actually experiencing such poor behavior you need to consider the quality of the people to which you have exposed yourself. In the meantime, chill out. You may rest assured that the bulk of Americans are a humble, respectful lot that wish you and yours the best.

    • their pride may be less patriotic arrogance and more a statement of fact.
      Well, from this US citizen, let me say that the problem is that Mars missions have had a very bad success rate (not surprising given what's being attempted), and the US has just had more trials so far than Britain had. Some US missions have vanished without a trace also. Britain has only had one single "roll of the dice" so far, so that's not enough to make a judgement call on as to what kind of success rate they are capable of.
    • Beagle2 was a very underfunded craft. Built on the cheap, but the Brits managed to do a great job of it with the money they had.

      Also, Britain has historically placed a very low priority (almost non-existant) on space missions of any sorts. I'm sure securing the funding they did get for Beagle was a fight and a half.

      Though Beagle's landing operation may have failed, landing is the most difficult and expensive part of the craft construction. But the rest of the construction is important as well and surel

  • Production Line (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:32AM (#7871055) Journal
    The hard part is the landing. If MER-B also survies, it would be nice if L-Mart can start a production line of this vehicle to be loaded with different instruments for different countries. While the price was 400 Million for each of these rovers, in a production line, I would expect the price to drop to 100 Million or less for the base model. Let UK, EU, India, Brasil, and Japan send up working systems with their instruments and their launchers (or with l-marts).

    Personally, I am interested in seeing a bunch of these crawl all over mars with all sorts of different science packages.

  • Ground Zero (Score:5, Interesting)

    by QuantumFTL ( 197300 ) * on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:37AM (#7871082)
    Well, having been in building 264 at JPL (the MER mission operations building) I must say it was an exciting experience... Everyone was waiting really tense, jumping once or twice at some of the annoucements that sounded bad at first... six minutes from landing to signal confirmation, the longest 6 in my life!

    When we got the signal, it was truely spectacular, everyone so excited, clapping, standing and hugging each other with vigorous congradulations. I was fortunate enough to be able to congradulate some of the higher ups (PI Steve Squyres, whom I work for, and Science Manager John Callas).

    On behalf of all of us on MER, I'd like to thank everyone that's supported this mission, especially those slashdotters that have vigorously defended the purpose and existance of mars. What we are doing is hard, but not impossible, and we will continue to try until we prevail.

    Today we had what I hope was the first of many victories on mars. We should be getting the first image back in a few minutes from the next odyssey pass.

    BTW, I'm not sure what the press releases said, but we were very fortunate that the lander landed base petal down, which should speed up deployment significantly as there is no need for the actuators to push against the weight of the rover.

    As I said earlier tonight, tonight went so well that it was as if we won the lottery, and by that I mean not just us at JPL but everyone on earth that will benefit from the knowlege we acquire. Congradulations all!

    Cheers,
    Justin Wick
    Science Activity Planner Support Staff
    Mars Exploration Rovers

    • On behalf of all of us on MER, I'd like to thank everyone that's supported this mission, especially those slashdotters that have vigorously defended the purpose and existance of mars.


      Thanks. I have always been a staunch defender of the existence of Mars.
      • Thanks. I have always been a staunch defender of the existence of Mars.

        I'm not supposed to tell you this, but it's a government conspiracy!

        Actually I woke up at 3:00 AM PST so... you get the idea :)

  • Congrats, NASA/JPL! Boo, NASA TV. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dan Crash ( 22904 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:38AM (#7871094) Journal
    First off, congratulations to everyone at NASA and JPL! The landing went off like clockwork. You should be proud. I know I am.

    But NASA TV... you blew it. Again.

    Here you have this tremendous opportunity to involve Americans young and old with the space program, to get them excited and emotionally invested in space exploration, and what do you do? You show us video of the control room.... with the sound off. You let us in on what the Flight Director is saying, but you don't decode it for the average viewer so they know what it means. You make landing on another freaking planet more boring than most cable access shows. Take a bow.

    You didn't even start your coverage until an hour before landing. If you had any vision, you could've made a whole day of it. You could've made it an event. Fuck Survivor, you've got the ultimate reality show! You should've had the whole nation tuned in. Instead they watched a repeat of MAD TV.

    NASA TV, wake up! You should be kicking the Sci-Fi channel's ass. Really. I expect more from you in the future.

    • In defense of NASA TV, they aren't everywhere, they aren't even in MOST places. I can tell you I know you can't get it if you're in Durham, NC (maybe DirectTV or Digital Cable), but most places have Comedy Central and Sci-Fi on basic cable...the internet feeds don't count...

      But, this still doesn't excuse them from making bad tv...

      In further defense of NASA TV, their operating budget for the whole year probably doesn't equal the budget of 1 episode of Survivor...then you've gotta bring in ppl over the wee

    • Re:Congrats, NASA/JPL! Boo, NASA TV. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by WayneConrad ( 312222 ) * <wconradNO@SPAMyagni.com> on Sunday January 04, 2004 @02:19AM (#7871320) Homepage
      Yes, NASA TV could have done better, but I admit that I enjoyed the campy, amateur-hour flavor.

      I thought the commentators did a great job, but I found myself wanting more of a raw feed with a lot less explanation. When someone on the flight control loop reports that they've aquired a signal, I don't need someone to repeat that they've aquired a signal. I don't think that Joe Armchair needs it either.

      I also found myself wishing they'd be quiet when something was happening. There was incredible drama in the room; some of the commentary got in the way of the story. When someone in the loop says something, the explainer should hush up so we can hear.

      Still, great program. I sent the cats flying for cover with my hooting when I heard that they had a safe landing.
    • They were the first place I could see images from Mars - and even now, after the final conference of the evening ended they are just showing a computer screen where someone is kindly cycling between the various panoramas they have so far. At least it's not a static screen any longer!

      Looks like they ended up against a nice juicy rock.

      And, for the geeky out there I saw a very brief "Gimp" splashscreen.

      I am very, very glad to have NasaTV tonight no matter how rough around the edges.
    • I tend to agree with you regarding NASA TV coverage of the Mars landing. I recall watching on some cable channel (CSPAN?) the Viking landings and Voyager encounters when I was a kid in the late '70s. If I'm not mistaking these were broadcast as well directly from JPL and hosted by Carl Sagan who was explaining the meaning of the images and made it sound really exciting? Does anyone else have memories of these broadcasts? They seem much better than we saw from NASA TV today, but perhaps my memory is fogg
    • But NASA TV... you blew it. Again.

      I got to watch it with about 600 other people at my local science museum [omsi.org] (via satellite feed). They had 300 chairs in an auditorium, playing it on a huge screen. When that filled up, they quickly scampered to get it playing on the ceiling of the planetarium. When that filled up, they played the audio in the hallway for everyone left.

      I admit it was pretty damn dry, but watching it with a few hundred other people helped fill in the dull moments. A hush over the entire

  • great news! lets not gloat over it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Indy1 ( 99447 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:57AM (#7871198)
    I am elated that nasa has landed sucessfully. At the same time, i am still quite sad over the apparent failure of Beagle 2. While I am an American, I dont see this as a "I win, you lose" situation. I dont care who lands a probe on mars, be it us, ESA, China, Russia, etc. Anyone who lands a probe there and gets useful data scores a victory for ALL of us. I also hope the ESA doesnt give up on doing these kinds of missions in the future.

  • Total Mission Bandwidth & Data Constraints (Score:5, Informative)

    by aldheorte ( 162967 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @02:02AM (#7871222)
    There is an interesting and informative entry on the NASA site regarding how much data can be transmitted back and forth between Earth and the rover:

    http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/mission/comm_data.html [nasa.gov]

    If we assume best case scenario for the transmission potential stated there and assume the direct-to-Earth rate averages the midpoint between the stated 12000bps and 3500bps, the total daily data for a single Martian day, direct-to-Earth and orbiter relay potential combined, is on the order of 17MB. The total data for the entire mission is on the order of 1,550MB.

    Of course, this has to include protocol overhead, error, and operating instructions, but it provides one quantitative, if not qualitative, answer to how much data can be retrieved by the mission. In this case, a bit more than 2 CDs worth.

    • Re:Total Mission Bandwidth & Data Constraints (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Dominic_Mazzoni ( 125164 ) * on Sunday January 04, 2004 @02:54AM (#7871476) Homepage
      The total daily data for a single Martian day, direct-to-Earth and orbiter relay potential combined, is on the order of 17MB. The total data for the entire mission is on the order of 1,550MB.

      Note that with multiple cameras at 1024x1024 resolution, the Mars Exploration Rovers could easily send quite a bit more information than that if the bandwith was available. I work in the Machine Learning Systems group at JPL, and one of our goals is to eventually put some artificial intelligence software onto a future Mars rover so that it can take far more pictures than could ever be transmitted, analyze them onboard, and send only the most interesting ones back. It's very tricky to pin down exactly what makes one image more interesting than another, of course, so that's the real challenge...

  • First images!!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dominic_Mazzoni ( 125164 ) * on Sunday January 04, 2004 @03:43AM (#7871630) Homepage
    This is ridiculously low-quality, but here's a screenshot [spaghetticode.org] of RealPlayer's stream of NASA TV from a few minutes ago. I'll post more pictures if I get anything good, but probably the real, high-quality images will be online within the hour. The first image here is of one of the mission control computer screens showing the images downloaded, including one image of the rover itself.

  • Latest Images from Spirit (as of 5AM EST) (Score:3, Informative)

    by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @06:09AM (#7872046)

    Image 1 [spaceflightnow.com] Screencap

    Image 2 [spaceflightnow.com] NASA Folks looking at image

    Image 3 [spaceflightnow.com] 360' shot

    Image 4 [spaceflightnow.com] NASA Folks looking at 360'

    Image 5 [spaceflightnow.com] panorama

    Image 5 Large [spaceflightnow.com] larger panorama

    Image 6 [spaceflightnow.com] first image before contact

    and if you havent noticed already just change # on the URL for the latest:

    http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/040104image # .html

    Oh yeah, and I second the fact that NASA-TV should have made this a big event but:

    a. What cable provider has NASA TV anymore, I think the general american public lost their space spirit (no pun intended) after the first few apollo missions.

    b. Ok, so hypathetically, if it were a big event like, say, the first moon mission, and it failed horribly, that really wouldnt help the american general public moral, now would it.

    I'm sure the CNN bit tomorrow will suffice for most people and as for those interested, check out this site [nasa.gov] for tons of images and some beautiful animations and video clips.

  • Beagle vs. Spirit (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rchoetzlein ( 737745 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @06:49AM (#7872148) Homepage
    In the Beagle-Spirit comparison, I think it is important to point out several things:
    - Spirit (~$400 mil) has over six times the budget of the Beagle (~$60 mil)
    - Spirit is built on the success of Pathfinder.
    - This is the European Space Agency's *first* time out to mars, and they attempted a *landing*
    - Our first two times out failed (Mariner 3 & 4), and our third was just a flyby for 71 photos. Of course, that was 1969.
    - Pathfinder is more recent, cost ~$200 mil... but of course Beagle is not a rover.
    - ESA never had a strong national space program similar to the US or USSR for budget reasons, as well as many other factors (natural resources, age and background of the nations it comprises, WW I & II)

    Bottom line, a simple comparison is impossible. Even so, here is an attempt: US space program performs better due to being the greatest world power (at the cost of being one of the worlds most hated nations). Money and power are very good for making Martian rovers (and microchips, and wireless networks, and stealth bombers), but they are also good at building inflated self images.

    My point? If you succeed, don't gloat, help others.. If you fail, try again.

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