gevmage writes, "CNN reports that the 'Opportunity' rover on Mars has reached the Victoria crater. The rovers Spirit and Opportunity arrived on Mars three years ago with planned mission lifetime of 90 days. The rover Spirit is wounded, having only 5 of 6 wheels functioning, and so it's moving quite slowly. However, Opportunity is still going strong and has been trucking towards the massive crater Victoria for almost the past year. Scientists have been hoping that Opportunity would get there so they can have a look at geologically older areas — and it's finally made it!" See the NASA press release for links to photos of the Victoria crater.
Space really is the final frontier.
News stories like this never cease to brighten up my day, and give me hope for the future.
Not to sound too corny, but do others find this is true?
Honestly not trying to troll, but no, sorry, this does not restore my faith in humanity at all. Unfortunately, there are far too many things happening every day (take the recent school shooting in Colorado, for instance) to continually keep my faith in humanity pretty much nonexistant.
And while our exploration of space at this point does have practical applications for current-day life, a lot of it is also just a "cool, let's see what we can learn" sort of thing. Which, again, is of use both today as well as in the future. But with the way things are going here on Earth right now (The environment, anyone? Wars? Etc.), who knows if we'll ever really be able to put a lot of our knowledge from space exploration to full use and truly reach the final frontier.
It's positive to see we won't grow bored quickly once humanity gets tired of playing war. But if you compare the budget spent on war and compare that to space exploration, it's more of a depressing thought. It does send out a great message saying "look what we can do with today's technology", but most people seem to lack a sense of imagination to see the possibilites if we really were determined to go out there. In fact, we should have been a lot further if you simply look at people were doing 40 years ago.
Absolutely. What amazes me is we can construct equipment that can fly millions of miles through close to absolute zero temparature, land on a planet with minimal human supervision, ride all over the place for *three* years with a design life of six months, and continues to beam back pictures. If you had suggested this to someone in 1965, they'd have thought you were a loony.
On the other hand, you look at this accomplishment, and then you wonder why the world's most popular operating system is successfull
Based on NASA's 2007 budget request, we could fund it for more than 100 years on what we've spent on the war in Iraq so far. We could fund it for 260 years with the money we've spent on the Defense Department in 2006. We could fund it for almost 300 years with the money Bush gave back in tax cuts for the richest 1%. The amount of money the Medicare Drug Plan is projected to cost over the next 10 years could fund NASA for 560 years.
NASA is not the first place you should be looking for answers to the government's budget problems.
It's a popular complaint though, because as opposed to the war in Iraq enhancing the US society every day it goes on, NASA isn't achieving [thespaceplace.com] anything good for it with their funding.:-p
Have you noticed that the countries with the largest militaries are the one's with the most capable space programs? Have you noticed that the countries with socialized medicine and minimal military are not in space, or they largely piggy back on the former? I think things are a bit more complex than you suggest. Now I'm all for greatly increasing NASA's funding, but getting rid of the Pentagon will do more harm to NASA than good. The place to cut the budget is all the damn pork projects that do nothing other than get incumbants re-elected. Some of these are in the Pentagon, but many are outside of it. Pork is one of the few things conservatives and liberals agree on.
"The most expensive thing in the world is a second-best military establishment, good but not good enough to win."
Robert A. Heinlein
Arianne 5 is one of the best launch vehicles in the known universe. For a change France is concentrating on practicalies - comms systems, observation and weather satellites, interplanetary studies etc. ESA have had some fantastic programmes recently. Whinching over-evolved chimps into space on the back of ICBM as some kind of vanity exercise (a la China etc) is not where it is at.
You're confusing correlation and causation. The Soviets may have had plenty of military, but they also had the biggest socialised medicine scheme you've ever seen.
The countries with space programs are the ones big enough and rich enough to afford it, and the desire to impress one's neighbours. First it was the USA and the Soviets. Then it was the Europeans, Japanese, and Chinese (no, the Europeans and Japanese don't have their own crewed launch vehicles, but the Europeans are planning to build one). The
Yeah. Things like radar, sonar, high performance jet engines, compact wireless telegraphy, nuclear power and computers would all have been invented so much quicker if there hadn't been wars to get in the way.
My blood just boils when people make these ascertions without giving them a second thought. They have bought in the popular wisdom spread mostly in countries in which, oh surprise, the economy is highly dependent in selling death machines. If you think that science in Iraq, Sudan, Palestine or Afghanistan is going to be advanced at all thanks to the ongoing wars there, I venture with confidence that you are an idiot.
The countries in which some scientific advancement is gained during conflicts do so because t
And in the case of Germany, the rewards are great for the losers. I'm no historian, but everything presented so far leads me to believe that Germany was much better off after WWII than it was before. I suspect Japan is too, but it may be that I am looking though too thick a cloud of cultural bias.
I would agree that in the long run, they have been better off, and that has happened often in history.
Have you noticed that since the Geneva Convention was signed, and the UN formed, no country has been better off afterwards? Or that no one has been treated better, except by the "Evil Empire" et al.? And that there are just as many wars, and they are just as deadly, but they don't end fast due to limitations in the Convention? AND if we were under the Geneva Convention during WW2, we would not have been able to bomb civilians, factories or nuke anyone? Notice a trend?
Germany was much better off after WWII than it was before. I suspect Japan is too
That had less to do with the war itself, and a great deal to do with the Marshall plan (in Europe) for rebuilding the countries' economies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_plan [wikipedia.org] The Japanese reconstruction, while different to Europe, also involved US economic management under the SCAP system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan's_post-war_econ omy [wikipedia.org]
To say that the rewards are great for the losers shows such an abismal ignorence that I don't know where to start. But lets start somewhere.
Germany was the second country with more people killed after the USSR, this without accounting for the people killed in the demented genocide that took place there. Entire towns like Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig were literally removed from the face of earth, and ever since then Germans, most of who by now had nothing to do with the war, have to deal with a national
According to the many articles I've read about Spirit and Opportunity, they'll continue to run as long as the dust that's collecting on the solar panels doesn't get too thick, resulting in blockage of the essential part of it's charging system.
I wonder, if in the future, NASA will develop a type of self cleaning aparatus to aide in "dusting" them.
That's an good question. When the PI for the project spoke at University of Illinois, someone asked that.
He said that basically having yet another moving part just wouldn't end up being worth the expense of engineering it and adding the weight to the rover and the launch vehicle.
The next rover that will be launched in a few years will have a plutonium oxide power source, so that the power won't be a factor.
Actually, dust on the panels isn't the only issue. Eventually the mechanical parts wear out, get dirt in them, so they don't work. Spirit is running on 5 of 6 wheels now. The PI said that if it loses another one, then it probably won't ever be able to move again. That is, the solar panels are fine, the computers and instruments are fine, but if one more motor goes out, then it's limited to what it can do in a stationary position.
Lower Quality solar panels? That's not the place to save money. They could have made the whole rovers out of Platimun, and it would still be a minute amount compared to the total cost of the mission. (about 7 million USD vs. 820 million USD)
Your instinct is incorrect. The "single larger rover" is going to last FAR longer than the MERs, unless something breaks. But it won't be due to the power source; it's RTG powered. It will also be able to drive faster and farther than the MERs. And do a lot more science. The MER-sized rover is obviously a good design, but they have many drawbacks. For one thing, they really were TOO heavy -- the airbag landing system nearly failed, and the small chute really is vulnerable to high horizontal winds. More
The shuttle program may have been a mess but the rovers are one of the greatest accomplishments in space exploration to date and they just keep going. I'm guessing at least one of the rovers will still be going two years from now. There may have been failures along the way but in Mars research NASA has done a stunning job. Most other countries haven't had much luck getting probes to orbit Mars but NASA has had many successes. I'd love to see the shuttle program scrapped but I'm still a massive NASA fan. I would love to see probe go to some of the more interesting sites on Mars though. The poles and such. They would need a self contained power source though. Nowhere near enough light for solar.
I had to laugh when I went to the Mission [nasa.gov] page. They have the Mission days listed in Sols, as well as the Sols Past Warranty!
This mission has been such a great success. I think it has fallen off the radar of most people who don't realize that they are still out there. NASA needs some better PR to capitalize on great science. NASA needs credit where credit is due, not for the ISS, but for true exploration.
Actually, NASA has failed as much as everyone else.
The USA is 5-for-6 in successfully landing it's landers (only failure was the Mars Polar Lander). Viking 1, 2, Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity all were successes (and wonderful successes at that).
Seeing projects like this really gives me hope about the space program. I mean, look at the ROI on this project: for a project that was only supposed to last 90 days, we've gotten over 1000 days of use out of it. Kinda makes up for the other "crater" project... =)
The rover Spirit is wounded, having only 5 of 6 wheels functioning, and so it's moving quite slowly.
Actually, spirit has stopped because it does not have enough power to move very far during Martian winter, and they would rather camp it on a small slope facing the sun than risk getting stuck without sunlight and freezing its parts to death. Spirit camped last Martian winter also for several weeks for a similar reason.
When Winter is finished (soon), it will rove again. However, it will not be near as nimble as it was with all 6 wheels.
Opportunity is at a slightly better lattitude for sunlight, and has been on flat areas this winter, so it does not need such winter camping.
"the Midnight Mars Browser software, which allows home users to download images and view slideshows and "virtual reality" panoramas from the Mars Exploration Rovers "Spirit" and "Opportunity"."
it is really awesome, try it out, you get the latest pics from Mars virtually real time (before they're up @ jpl's site.)
Pannable and zoomable panorama's, false colour and true colour movies etc etc.
What... for tea and scones? To chat about old times? To poke fun together at the other countries who couldn't get something down to mars in one piece? The only useful thing to come out of a meetup would be if one of them got stuck and needed a tow, but then you risk both of them getting stuck.
What would be cool is to find the site of one of the other failed surface missions... but think about how far it would have to travel to go there and how long it would take. These things move really really slow and Mars
I don't think so. The article says It has driven more than 9.2 kilometers (5.7 miles).
They've been there (almost) 3 years, but that's all the farther Opportunity has gone, and it's the one with all wheels working. They are on the opposite sides of Mars, so they won't ever meet unless they're both functioning for hundreds or thousands of years, which is very unlikely.
Wrong, they landed in January of 2004. They were launched in the summer of 2003. Seeing how we have three months until the three year mark, that's not to far off.
Just out of curiosity--by what standards exactly, is China "making the US look pretty bad" in space tech?
They've managed--using Russian derivative technology--to put one man into space. Nothing shoddy, true, however the US and Russia each, with completely new technologies, doing something never done before, put people into space over 45 years ago. We put men on the moon about 35 years ago.
I'm all in favor of furthering space exploration, and China is a very welcome addition to the frame (I hope their involvement makes us go to the moon again frankly). Saying that they make NASA look bad though is ludicrous and ill-informed.
Events such as this restore my faith in Humanity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Events such as this restore my faith in Humanit (Score:4, Interesting)
And while our exploration of space at this point does have practical applications for current-day life, a lot of it is also just a "cool, let's see what we can learn" sort of thing. Which, again, is of use both today as well as in the future. But with the way things are going here on Earth right now (The environment, anyone? Wars? Etc.), who knows if we'll ever really be able to put a lot of our knowledge from space exploration to full use and truly reach the final frontier.
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It does send out a great message saying "look what we can do with today's technology", but most people seem to lack a sense of imagination to see the possibilites if we really were determined to go out there. In fact, we should have been a lot further if you simply look at people were doing 40 years ago.
Re:Events such as this restore my faith in Humanit (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, you look at this accomplishment, and then you wonder why the world's most popular operating system is successfull
Re:Events such as this restore my faith in Humanit (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA is not the first place you should be looking for answers to the government's budget problems.
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Pacifist Socialists don't make it to space ... (Score:5, Interesting)
"The most expensive thing in the world is a second-best military establishment, good but not good enough to win."
Robert A. Heinlein
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Re:Pacifist Socialists don't make it to space ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you noticed a rather large launch complex in South America, and space probes orbiting the Moon, Venus, and Mars?
Have you even glanced at the ESA's upcoming mision roster?
You'll have to to better than that if you want to troll around here.
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Counter example : France (Score:4, Insightful)
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Correlation does not imply causation (Score:3, Interesting)
The countries with space programs are the ones big enough and rich enough to afford it, and the desire to impress one's neighbours. First it was the USA and the Soviets. Then it was the Europeans, Japanese, and Chinese (no, the Europeans and Japanese don't have their own crewed launch vehicles, but the Europeans are planning to build one). The
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You don't know that. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think that science in Iraq, Sudan, Palestine or Afghanistan is going to be advanced at all thanks to the ongoing wars there, I venture with confidence that you are an idiot.
The countries in which some scientific advancement is gained during conflicts do so because t
Re:And in the case of Germany... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would agree that in the long run, they have been better off, and that has happened often in history.
Have you noticed that since the Geneva Convention was signed, and the UN formed, no country has been better off afterwards? Or that no one has been treated better, except by the "Evil Empire" et al.? And that there are just as many wars, and they are just as deadly, but they don't end fast due to limitations in the Convention? AND if we were under the Geneva Convention during WW2, we would not have been able to bomb civilians, factories or nuke anyone? Notice a trend?
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Typical miltaristic bullshit. (Score:3, Interesting)
Vietnam, in spite of this, is better off now.
This is due to adopting market reforms and has nothing to do with the existence of the UN or the Geneva convention.
How in your mind economic development after a war is linked to reasonbale safeguards against butal behaviour is beyond my comprehension.
We have seen plenty of conflicts (Burundi, Rwanda, Congo, Yugoslavia) in which the Geneva conventions and the UN were just meaningles wor
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That had less to do with the war itself, and a great deal to do with the Marshall plan (in Europe) for rebuilding the countries' economies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_plan [wikipedia.org] The Japanese reconstruction, while different to Europe, also involved US economic management under the SCAP system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan's_post-war_econ omy [wikipedia.org]
You are no historian, and it shows. (Score:3, Insightful)
But lets start somewhere.
Germany was the second country with more people killed after the USSR, this without accounting for the people killed in the demented genocide that took place there. Entire towns like Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig were literally removed from the face of earth, and ever since then Germans, most of who by now had nothing to do with the war, have to deal with a national
These are some tough robots (Score:2, Interesting)
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I wonder, if in the future, NASA will develop a type of self cleaning aparatus to aide in "dusting" them.
Re:These are some tough robots (Score:5, Informative)
He said that basically having yet another moving part just wouldn't end up being worth the expense of engineering it and adding the weight to the rover and the launch vehicle.
The next rover that will be launched in a few years will have a plutonium oxide power source, so that the power won't be a factor.
Actually, dust on the panels isn't the only issue. Eventually the mechanical parts wear out, get dirt in them, so they don't work. Spirit is running on 5 of 6 wheels now. The PI said that if it loses another one, then it probably won't ever be able to move again. That is, the solar panels are fine, the computers and instruments are fine, but if one more motor goes out, then it's limited to what it can do in a stationary position.
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They clean themselves (Score:3, Interesting)
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The MER-sized rover is obviously a good design, but they have many drawbacks. For one thing, they really were TOO heavy -- the airbag landing system nearly failed, and the small chute really is vulnerable to high horizontal winds. More
What units? (Score:3, Funny)
Are those English Wheels or Metric Wheels?
Victoria's Secreat no more (Score:4, Funny)
Score one for NASA (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Score one for NASA (Score:5, Interesting)
This mission has been such a great success. I think it has fallen off the radar of most people who don't realize that they are still out there. NASA needs some better PR to capitalize on great science. NASA needs credit where credit is due, not for the ISS, but for true exploration.
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Wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
The USA is 5-for-6 in successfully landing it's landers (only failure was the Mars Polar Lander). Viking 1, 2, Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity all were successes (and wonderful successes at that).
USSR had zero landers successfully make it.
The ESA is 0-for-1 in landers.
thats what he said (Score:5, Funny)
An ROI that any bean-counter would love... (Score:2, Interesting)
Add an " 's " (Score:4, Funny)
Still going? (Score:2, Funny)
Are you sure these rovers were made in America??
The prestigious Nobel in Wind and Dust (Score:2)
Matthew 26:41 (Score:3, Funny)
There's a lot of good info [bible.org] and advice [bible.org] in the Bible...
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When Spirit had a show-stopping glitch with its flash memory card in 2004, one headline read, "The Spirit is willing, but the flash is weak".
Still a tossup (Score:3, Funny)
Not quite accurate with regard to "slow" (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, spirit has stopped because it does not have enough power to move very far during Martian winter, and they would rather camp it on a small slope facing the sun than risk getting stuck without sunlight and freezing its parts to death. Spirit camped last Martian winter also for several weeks for a similar reason.
When Winter is finished (soon), it will rove again. However, it will not be near as nimble as it was with all 6 wheels.
Opportunity is at a slightly better lattitude for sunlight, and has been on flat areas this winter, so it does not need such winter camping.
Autostitched and VR pano's from Mars (Score:4, Informative)
http://midnightmarsbrowser.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
"the Midnight Mars Browser software, which allows home users to download images and view slideshows and "virtual reality" panoramas from the Mars Exploration Rovers "Spirit" and "Opportunity"."
it is really awesome, try it out, you get the latest pics from Mars virtually real time (before they're up @ jpl's site.)
Pannable and zoomable panorama's, false colour and true colour movies etc etc.
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The only useful thing to come out of a meetup would be if one of them got stuck and needed a tow, but then you risk both of them getting stuck.
What would be cool is to find the site of one of the other failed surface missions... but think about how far it would have to travel to go there and how long it would take. These things move really really slow and Mars
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A tow to where?
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They've been there (almost) 3 years, but that's all the farther Opportunity has gone, and it's the one with all wheels working. They are on the opposite sides of Mars, so they won't ever meet unless they're both functioning for hundreds or thousands of years, which is very unlikely.
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It will be "January 2007" in about 15 weeks. Three years is 156 weeks. "Within 10%" is pretty "near", as far as I care...
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Re:US vs China (Score:5, Insightful)
They've managed--using Russian derivative technology--to put one man into space. Nothing shoddy, true, however the US and Russia each, with completely new technologies, doing something never done before, put people into space over 45 years ago. We put men on the moon about 35 years ago.
I'm all in favor of furthering space exploration, and China is a very welcome addition to the frame (I hope their involvement makes us go to the moon again frankly). Saying that they make NASA look bad though is ludicrous and ill-informed.
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