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Space

Mars-On-Earth Webcams Online 34

Posted by Hemos from the look-into-the-future dept.
mkasei writes: "High in the arctic polar desert sits the Mars Society's Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station. Its first year of operations started about 5 weeks ago. There have been numerous technical difficualties but everything seems to be working now. Today they turned on 2 of 3 webcams so people can spy in on them. The habitat as it is called has two decks. There is a webcam on each deck. A third is to be placed outside facing the hab as "astronauts" egress out of the hab for EVA's in simulated space suits. They are working in collaboration with NASA's Haughton-Mars Project and other organizations to learn what it will be like to live and work on Mars. In the next few weeks they plan on testing out several small rovers and a prototype Mars suit."
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Mars On Earth Webcams Online More

Mars On Earth Webcams Online

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  • It would be nice if they got a snowball cam... anyone else remeber the old one at Rome labs?

    Most cams with a reasonable amount of viewers seems to have the following.
    1) Diary.
    2) Screenshots of "moments"
    3) The possibility of nudity.

    We'll see hpw it goes.

    // yendor


    --
    It could be coffe.... or it could just be some warm brown liquid containing lots of caffeen.
  • http://www.spaceref.com/focuson/marsonearth/marsca m1.html

    That looks more like a geek's computer room than a simulated mars habitat.

    http://www.spaceref.com/focuson/marsonearth/marsca m2.html

    Again, looking more like a geek kitchen than a mars habitat.

    Perhaps this is a sinister plot to see how Geeks In Space would survive.. creepy, no?

    ---
  • That thinks that we should be practicing this on the *moon* before we go galavanting off to another planet? I mean, why haven't we been back to the moon and put up a space station? Is it just not as *cool* as going to mars?
  • Oh come on! Surely you didn't miss Sigourney Weaver wriggling her way into the space suit in Alien whilst clad only in micro panties and thin white tank top?

    Then again, Sigourney herself is getting on a bit...
  • As in "Pass me some 'o that duct tape. The damn duct is falling apart."

    If it moves and shouldn't use duct tape. If it doesn't move and should, use WD-40."
  • ...at a Linuxworld, only without the beanbag chairs. Just a bunch of geeks hanging out in front of computers.

    (FWIW, I think what they are doing is decent science)
  • I'm not sure you'd want to rebuild S-Vs, but that doesn't mean that there aren't options. At the point that NASA committed to a Mars mission, they'd probably build vehicles based on the Shuttle, with liquid (rather than solid) boosters, and an additional SSME. That way, they could reuse the existing pads. If Russia or a non-NASA organization were to want to go to Mars, they'd either use Energia or build an all-new booster (though possibly reusing the S-Vs engine designs).
  • They would use a shuttle-type design for the same reason that they used the current design of ISS: political considerations outweigh technology optimization. The ISS could have been built much cheaper, producing a heavy launch vehicle in the process, had that option been chosen. Instead, the commission entrusted with the decision (headed by Al Gore at the time) chose the mission that would make the most use of (and therefore most justify) the shuttle fleet - in the bargain tripling the cost of ISS.
  • The Russian Energya booster, which is about to recomissioned for use on the Buran shuttle, can lift 100 tons. Guess what country is also open to private enterprise space launches?

  • The IKEA kitchen units really do it for me (see the photo section)...

    (nah seriously folks, why not, a good way to try out technologies and the group dynamic issues, go for it)

  • Survivor isn't a US first .. it's Swedish (called Robinson - from Robinson Crusoe)

    (score -1, offtopic)

  • In the current market-place this really doesn't stand a chance next to the awesome financial giant that is www.voyeurdorm.com [voyeurdorm.com] I mean, seriously, why are they even TRYING to compete? I plan on somehow making this my desktop background at work, and watching it as much as I can.

  • This just in...the global water level has risen across the world. Apparently someone outfitted the artic station research facililty with computers running the AMD Athlon (TM) processor in a massive cost cutting effort.
  • Isn't it true that one of the scientist on board is the guitar player from Devo, maybe we can catch them reenacting the video to 'Whip It'
  • As a bachelor I must ask "And the problem is?"

    What a bachelor on Slashdot. I don't bealieve it.
  • I heard Ttttt and Martin O'Hare are trying to form an alliance to get John Carter banished, unless Marvin gets Head of Habitat..
  • Also sprach alteridem:
    What a great way to bring up kids. Send them out to play in their spacesuits. Kids being kids will probably fall over and crack their visors all the time. "Oops, Billy just fell over and killed himself Honey. That is the second child this month!"

    As a bachelor I must ask "And the problem is?"

  • a long term solution to its funding problems: spycams in college coed showers and bedrooms. Go NASA!!! I'm just so happy now that the US gov has finally embraced pr0n as a financial resource.
  • I wish I had a Titanium Powerbook here on Mars...
  • ...wrong planet, it was N.J!!

  • Cams online... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We get signal!
  • Rockets is easy. Mr. Zubrin's design for an "Ares" booster incorporates four Shuttle main engines, and two Shuttle solid rocket boosters. The design does not require a Shuttle to be in the stack, so all the payload is Mars hardware.

    NASA designs for a Shuttle-C (basically a regular Shuttle stack with a cargo pod instead of the Shuttle) would also be very near the payload requirements.

    Energiya would also work...provided we can figure out how to make them stop exploding.

    Saying that it's impossible to build a 100 ton payload rocket is absolutely ludicrous. We did fine thirty years ago, and engineers have gotten smarter since then (by virtue of learning from the mistakes of others.)
  • What's on the Moon?
    Rocks. Maybe some water.
    What's on Mars?
    Water. Maybe life.
    Which is more interesting?

    Once you're out of Earth's gravity well, you're halfway to anywhere. We HAVE put up a space station. What we're going to do with it, heaven only knows. If you're really interested in an in-depth exploration of why Mars is radically more useful scientifically than other space endeavors, I recommend "The Case for Mars", by Mars Society's Dr. Robert Zubrin. You can buy the book on their site. It's absolutely superb reading...it explains in detail how to get to Mars, how much it will cost, and why we ought to go.
  • Take a look at the concept painting [marssociety.org] from the site. What a great way to bring up kids. Send them out to play in their spacesuits. Kids being kids will probably fall over and crack their visors all the time. "Oops, Billy just fell over and killed himself Honey. That is the second child this month!"

    Even though there is probably nothing else to do on Mars other than work on having babies, I doubt any woman could churn them out faster than they would manage to kill themselves. There are biological limits here...

  • You mean like in Barbarella? Jane Fonda is a bit too old now. Who should it be?
  • Not NASA, the Mars Society. This is a privately funded venture, by a private organization. They're partnering with NASA on research and exchange, but its not a "NASA" idea or project.

    http://www.marssociety.org

    Here's to private enterprise providing the balls to get some work done towards sending humans to Mars. If they have their way, and NASA doesn't scoot its butt into gear, they intend to try to get the funding to go to Mars without Nasa. Join up, some em some funds, take part.

    Derek
  • Besides the semi cool factor of this (though it does look pretty normal for a Mars outpost from a geeks perspective), this is a smart way for NASA to build support for Mars exploration. FOlks obviously dig reality TV and some webcams (usually porn ones but not always) can hardly handle their load.

    I figure they pay a few ladies in skimpy underwear to strip out of spacesuits once in a while and their viewership will skyrocket - then they can reel the suckers in as they do their serious work - when it comes time to spend the billions of dollars a manned mission woul dtake, they'll have better support me thinks because people are de-sensitized to the idea.

    Or not - its 6AM, blame father time for my post :0

  • Do they get to keep their space suits if they get voted out of the habitat?
  • SciAm did a good piece on this earlier this year. Here's the link:

    http://www.sciam.com/2000/0300issue/0300zubrin.htm l [sciam.com]

  • How about SirCam? It would follow eligible bachelors, and viewers could ask them for advice on the file they're sending :)

    |---------------|

  • Saturn 5? Was Re:Scientific American article (Score:3)

    by joneshenry ( 9497 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @12:35AM (#2184079)
    It seems to me Zubrin's plan immediately falls apart because we simply don't have "a single, heavy-lift booster rocket with a capability equal to that of the Saturn 5 rockets from the Apollo era". Is Zubrin talking about something similar to Magnum [space.com]? According to that article, even if the plans for the original Saturn 5 haven't been destroyed, it is simply impossible for us to manufacture something similar to the Saturn 5 today. Magnum's 80 tons of payload would be a bit less than the 100 of Saturn 5.

  • Expectations... (Score:3)

    by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @12:55AM (#2184080)
    But where's the "Up Space Suit" cam? And how do we vote them out of the Habitat?

  • Reality TV! (Score:4)

    by Dr_Cheeks ( 110261 ) on Monday July 30, 2001 @12:07AM (#2184081) Homepage Journal
    Phew, thank God for this. Big Brother and Survivor have just finished here in the UK - I need somewhere else to get my fix of reality TV. Question is; do they get rewarded with booze/food/etc. if they complete their tasks correctly, and get such privileges witheld if they're unsucessful?

    And how does the system of voting people out work? I couldn't find anything on the site about it.

  • In other news: The Mars Society [marssociety.org]'s Arctic Research Station project suffered a crushing defeat after only five weeks of operation when their life support systems, hosted on the machine arctic.marssociety.org [marssociety.org], went offline after a mass distributed denial of service attacks known as the Slashdot [slashdot.org] effect killed their web server, which was hosted on the very same machine.

    Thousands of users watched the crew's last agonized struggles over two of the three newly-operational web cams [spaceref.com]. Again, a prosperous project has been killed by the mindless hacking activities of a group of anonymous cowards.

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