NASA Mars Satellite Snaps 1st Public-Picked Photos 61
coondoggie writes "NASA today said it took eight high-resolution photos of Mars that were chosen through a public suggestion box the space agency put up in January. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is nicknamed 'the people's camera,' NASA stated. Through the suggestion box known as HiWish, NASA has received nearly 1,000 suggestions. The first eight images of areas the public selected are available online."
Mirror? (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst part about trolls (Score:1, Insightful)
Is that you can only mod them down once.
Re:Buzzkill (Score:5, Insightful)
Buzzkill is right. You could at least have formulated a reasonable complaint, instead of being a whiny bitch. How much do you figure it costs to snap a few pictures using a satellite which is already in orbit of mars? Enough to buy lunch for 10 kids in your hypothetical "closing schools"?
Re:Buzzkill (Score:4, Insightful)
What can I say ... your comments are a perfect demonstration of the fact that education is wasted on most people.
The US spends about 1 trillion dollars per year on education. The entire NASA budget clocks in at under 19 billion. If you scrapped NASA entirely, you could increase education spending by less than 2 percent. Now, it's clear where you stand on the issue, but I'd personally much rather use that money to push back the boundaries of human knowledge instead of giving it to the school system and praying for a miracle.
Re:Buzzkill (Score:5, Insightful)
Throwing money at schools won't improve education. The extra money will go for more rent-a-cops, metal detectors and an extra limo for the members of the school board. It has been tried before.
However canceling NASA will eliminate the aspirations and goals of thousands of bright young people and put us in a position where all the knowledge and skills of a generation of aerospace engineers are lost. The cost of restarting the space program after giving it up for a decade would dwarf the amount saved. We give that up and we as a nation will have accepted our place among the third world nations while nations like Pakistan, India, China and even North Korea take the lead.
I agree that we need a larger focus on education in this country, but gutting NASA isn't the answer. It is going to take a major policy change to fix education because the system is degenerate. If that costs more, then can find the money somewhere else.
Re:suggestions? (Score:3, Insightful)
,i>I'll give 40 to 1 that the few wishes selected out of the 1000's were pictures that the NASA scientists wanted to take anyway, but created a huge public relations event to make themselves look good. "Just consider the kids...!"
The odds that NASA is only taking the pictures they want to take because they look scientifically valuable to them is 100%.
The odds that NASA is selecting such pictures from the set of public suggestions is also 100%.
I mean sure the orbiter is taking other pictures besides, but the whole point of this exercise is that NASA by itself does not have the resources to manually go over the lower resolution photos taken of Mars to find things to look at closer and keep the HiRISE camera busy.
The PR aspect is there for sure, but they really do want the public to serve as a first-level filter of the massive amount of photographic data taken of Mars. That's why they don't just ask you to submit coordinates, but also to categorize the picture and suggest why it's scientifically interesting, to make winnowing through the suggestions easier. Otherwise they could just have you submit coordinates, or give you a list and let you 'vote' like they did for the ISS module. :P