NASA Releases HiRISE Images of Curiosity's Descent 220
gcnaddict writes "NASA released content from the MRO HiRISE imager taken during the descent of the Curiosity Rover. Among the most notable artifacts are the images themselves as well as a diagram showing the exact location of the rover relative to NASA's target."
Update: 08/07 00:15 GMT by U L : And now for a picture from the rover itself.
Fantastic! (Score:5, Funny)
Nice shot. And kudos to the folks who painted the white square on the surface of Mars. If only the people who striped our freeways could have done such a good job.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
So, this was not done in the Nevada desert?
No -- they shoot the moon landings in Nevada; they shoot the Mars Rover stuff in Chile:
http://www.timshome.com/chile/images/2001/cl27_valle_luna.jpg [timshome.com]
Too cool (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Too cool (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, things are going the other way. NASA's unmanned space budget is being cut.
The Obama administration plans to massively cut funding for NASA’s planetary exploration program. Zubrin writes that Obama’s 2013 budget would permit the continuation of a couple of projects—the MAVEN orbiter and the Mars Science Curiosity Lab—but would otherwise leave planetary exploration without much of a budget. The space astronomy program, too, faces deep cuts. [slate.com]
The overall NASA budget is similar, but unmanned probes and robotic science budgets have been savaged :-(.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Too cool (Score:5, Insightful)
Here lie the last remaining artifacts from a once-great race—the humans—their great potential cut down in its prime by their tremendous lack of foresight. For centuries, the great thinkers had shouted the need to venture among the stars, but their leaders were too busy worrying about building bigger and better weapons to defend themselves from their neighbors. When the great war came and the environment was poisoned beyond the ability to sustain life, the politicians pointed fingers and blustered their "I told you sos", but in the end, it made little difference. Their fate was sealed long before.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Write your local politician to change this. Just a few letters make a huge difference.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Our local politicians have no influence in the affairs of a foreign nation.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't lie to yourself, there is no money for them to squeeze out of space exploration so they are diverting it to industries that can provide the biggest kickbacks. Like oil and health care industries or war manufacturing. It has nothing to do with which party or administration, and if you think who you vote for matters in this issue, you haven't been paying attention.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I would've thought that the 'Mir" in your username would show where your loyalties lie. ;-)
And the 'Roman'. And your latin nick!
Re: (Score:2)
hates education
- only a publicly 'educated' AC conflates 'hating' education and being against public funding and regulations for education, same applies to health care.
Civil rights don't exist, there are only individual rights.
Minimum wage shouldn't exist either by the way.
Oh, you are right on the entire 'regulations' thing.
Re:Too cool (Score:5, Insightful)
Why spend 2.5 billion on NASA when you can buy a few more Solyndra's.
Why spend 2.5 billion on NASA when you can buy one B2 stealth bomber?
Re:Too cool (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, all American's can have an impact on that decision. I was all for a reduction in manned space travel expenditures and ending the money pit that was the shuttle program "Thanks Nixon!" However, I was under the impression that they surely would not impose cuts to NASA and JPL's hugely successful unmanned missions. The things Nasa has accomplished over the past 15 years with rover's, probes, and telescopes is astonishing.
Nope, you're not alone...
Re:Too cool (Score:4, Funny)
A drill to Europa? You are just gonna find a lot of dead people and France's perfume deposit.
Re:Too cool (Score:4, Insightful)
Or Enceladus or a rover-y thing to Titan. Seriously though it seems like we've discovered all this amazing stuff about our solar system and right when we're on a solid path to explore these discoveries in depth, poof! there goes the funding...
Re: (Score:3)
Absolutely. The countries that would be interested in science for the sake of science, don't have big enough budgets. The countries that do are interested in war (because that's what keeps filling the right pockets). We are out of luck.
Re:Too cool (Score:5, Informative)
But may I ask - as a European - how you could do that ? It doesn't seem that you can vote on the other guy because from my POV he seems worse then Obama regarding science. And politicians have the habit - once they are in power - not to listen to the public anymore.
We had him for a couple of days here in Europe and the general consensus was that he remind us a lot of Bush junior and that there is potential that he gets your country in another expensive war. The money will need to come from somewhere and the guy didn't come over as particularly bright or somebody who likes intellectual challenges which science provoke.
Re: (Score:2)
Remember, all American's can have an impact on that decision. But may I ask - as a European - how you could do that ? ....
In theory, more local congress-critters are more receptive to their constituents wants/needs than are the national politicians. For example, in my hometown they build the cores for ship/sub nuclear reactors (or is it nuculur ... lol). As you can imagine, it's a very pro-defense spending area and our local politicians do their best to make sure more subs/destroyers/carriers get built.
To make this expensive nasa stuff fly, us US-ians will need enough of the politicians to feel like their constituents hav
Re:Too cool (Score:4, Informative)
Maryland - Goddard Space Flight Center [nasa.gov]
New Mexico - AF Research Lab - Space Vehicles [af.mil], Sandia Labs [sandia.gov], Los Alamos Labs [lanl.gov]
Colorado - Ball [ballaerospace.com], Raytheon [raytheon.com], etc
California - JPL [nasa.gov], Livermore Labs [llnl.gov] and way too many others to list
Virginia - Navy Research Lab [navy.mil], Wallops Island [nasa.gov]
Texas - UT Dallas [utdallas.edu], Texas A&M [tamu.edu], Johnson Space Center [nasa.gov], many more
Arizona - Orbital Sciences Corp [orbital.com]., GD [gdc4s.com], etc
Tennessee - Oakridge [ornl.gov]
Alabama - U.S. Space and Rocket Center [wikipedia.org]
Utah -Space Dynamics Laboratory [usu.edu], L3 [manta.com]
Florida - Kennedy [nasa.gov], ATK [atk.com] and many more
Alaska - Kodiak Island [wikipedia.org]
The space industry is spread out over the entire country. This list could go on and on. Saying it is only Florida and Texas that benefit is mildly absurd. I agree with the idea, but it isn't nearly as narrow as that.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't care what it costs, I want a drill sent to Europa...
It's probably cheap enough to send a hand drill to Europa. Don't think it'd be any good, but hey, you get your drill on Europa :)
Freaking incredible. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just think about this a moment. NASA took a photo from a satellite, of a probe landing on another planet. And they got telemetry relayed about the landing from ANOTHER satellite.
And it's not just a bright pixel, you can clearly see what it is.
Stunning.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the detail on the parachute is absolutely amazing. In fact, the whole thing is amazing.
(Looks up furtively, tightens tin foil hat, scrunches down.)
Re:Freaking incredible. (Score:5, Informative)
What is totally amazing about that image is not only do you clearly see the shading of the parachute itself, but you also see _in the same picture_ the protective heat shield cover falling away from the lander, too. In short, one of the most amazing images ever produced by NASA. (thumbs up)
Re: (Score:2)
Huh? Where in the picture is the heat shield cover, and why doesn't the NASA page mention this?
Re: (Score:2)
Here's the picture from Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog on Discover magazine's web site:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/08/06/curiosity-update-heat-shield-spotted/ [discovermagazine.com]
Re:Freaking incredible. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
But there will always be pathetic yahoos who, out of some desire to make themselves feel important will deny our species' technical abilities.
Re:Freaking incredible. (Score:5, Insightful)
But there will always be pathetic yahoos who, out of some desire to make themselves feel important will deny our species' technical abilities.
Yes, and they will post about it on the Internet without ever sensing the irony.
Re:Freaking incredible. (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean that's cool and all, but I think the more significant piece is that the landing was accurate to within 2km with a journey covering nine months and somewhere roughly around 200m km. Scale that down to something we can actually comprehend, and it's using autopilot for 100km and being accurate to within 1mm. Where talking to your co-pilot takes as much as 14 minutes, with another 14 minutes to hear their response.
We've got some damn fine people working on this.
Re:Freaking incredible. (Score:5, Informative)
We've got some damn fine people working on this.
And a lot of them will be looking for work after the next round of NASA budget cuts - no matter who wins the next election.
NASA's budget as a fraction of federal spending is 0.48%. That's the lowest it's been since 1960. And it's getting smaller.
Dig on this:
Curiosity project budget: USD 2.5 billion
Cost of "War on Terror" so far: USD 1.36 trillion and counting (yes that's one thousand three hundred and sixty billion)
Re: (Score:3)
Curiosity project budget: USD 2.5 billion
Cost of "War on Terror" so far: USD 1.36 trillion and counting (yes that's one thousand three hundred and sixty billion)
The $2.5B would hardly serve to bail out one sleazy banker so he can get his bonus.
Re: (Score:2)
Here in California they just floated $5 billion in bonds for that fuckhead Fossil Brown's full scale choo choo train set. The final bill could cover fifty Mars overs.
This is what you get, you republican and democrat party loyalists, when you put your particular breed of sociopath into office over and over.
Yeah, i know- its the OTHER side that's all stoooopid and evuuul and your team is all ponies and purity. Don't even start in with your red or blue shit. You're ALL guilty.
Re: (Score:3)
By the way, if you want to have some credibility as a non-partisan, you should avoid explicitly declaring that you won't listen to anyone who disagrees with you. But you have, so there's no point elaborating or in any other way attempting to explain that the (R)s and (D)s are not remotely equally as bad.
Re:Freaking incredible. (Score:5, Informative)
Director Bolden, on his meeting with Obama on NASA strategy, mission: " ...perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering."
This was one throwaway line by a federal bureaucrat in a single substance-free interview, where he was obviously trying to pander to his audience. (And the White House very quickly corrected him, as has been pointed out previously.) Do you really believe that anything NASA has done since then has been designed to further this supposed goal? Please, explain how the Curiosity mission has been corrupted to soothe the feelings of Muslims.
Re: (Score:3)
I noticed that the White House called this "a great day for America", "a great day for this nation", etc. Repeat ad nauseam.
Would it really have killed them to say "a great day for humanity"? I don't think Americans would have minded.
Imagine if Neil Armstrong had said "that's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for America".
Re: (Score:3)
Actually Bolden said during his address after the landing that 4 other countries had been involved in some way in the Curiousity landing but that he "wasn't going to say who they are", with no reason provided.
Re: (Score:3)
Other countries are involved with the various science instruments on the rover. My impression is that they they weren't mentioned specifically because they didn't want to risk omitting someone. There's a few non Americans listed on the MSL Project Science Group [nasa.gov].
Wikipedia lists [wikipedia.org] Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, United States, United Kingdom as having a role on the instrument team.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Freaking incredible. (Score:5, Interesting)
I noticed that the White House called this "a great day for America", "a great day for this nation", etc. Repeat ad nauseam.
Would it really have killed them to say "a great day for humanity"? I don't think Americans would have minded.
As a non-American that's the sort of thing that normally makes me cringe. But you know what? Today I don't give a fuck. NASA has to beg for every cent it gets from the Federal govt and anything NASA does to justify the money it gets is fine by me today.
As a space geek I totally understand why this sort of language is getting used. It's marketing. NASA has to sell this sort of stuff to Bubba the Taxpayer. Bubba don't care about searching for life on other planets. All that science shit is for the nerds Bubba used to bully in highschool. But label it AMERICA KICKING ASS and all of a sudden Bubba does care, and you better believe he's in favor of it.
Turn the whole fucking event into an ad for NASA with a tagline of "AMERICA FUCK YEAH" and then see if either of the Presidential candidates dares go into an election promising to cut space funding. I'll grin and bear it.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think any Presidential candidate has ever used cutting NASA as a campaign slogan. It's one of things they just don't talk about, and then slash on page 1,345 of the budget. You're wrong about the Bubba thing. Most Americans in their 30s and beyond have a certain reverence for NASA. The Apollo missions and all that. But it's a reverence in abstract because people don't think about the budget. Most Americans have no idea how much is spent on this and that in the Federal government.
Obama certainly does
Re: (Score:2)
Obama certainly doesn't seem to care about space exploration and doesn't seem to care about science in general
But ... he was on Mythbusters!
Re: (Score:2)
Be quick with such posts, so long as the Americans are still asleep. My own post on that yesterday reached +5 Insightful by noon, dropping to 0 within another 4 hours or so as Americans went back to work err... the internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" was never more relevant.
Re: (Score:2)
You, apparently, haven't been living in America for the past ten years.
Ya got me there...
Re: (Score:2)
A single reason why he'd want to shut it down?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Freaking incredible. (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is this: providing for the national defense of the United States is the constitutional duty of the federal government, funding for science and space projects is not.
BOOM.
Not sure how the Iraq war is really "providing for the national defense of the US" though.
Maybe stop the war 2 weeks early and we could fund another couple of these amazing missions to Mars and beyond.
Re: (Score:2)
And a nation that can land a 900lb probe within 2km of the planned spot on another planet has developed some pretty impressive technical abilities that potential enemies can see as well.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not even going to try and describe the number of things we now take for granted that are owed to national spending on both basic and applied research, other than to say that subjecting the rest of us to your ill-informed comment requires several rather important ones. Fantastic as it is sad to see people rant about the tiny sliver of America's national budget marked 'science' that's cumulatively done prob
Re: (Score:3)
Well, they weren't "accurate within 2km" in the conventional sense - which would mean they came down within 2km of a designated point. Curiosity didn't have a designated point, it had an eclipse and NASA would have been "on target" and considered a success regardless of where it landed in the eclipse. (The far edge of the
Re: (Score:2)
I mean that's cool and all, but I think the more significant piece is that the landing was accurate to within 2km with a journey covering nine months and somewhere roughly around 200m km.
To be fair; they've made a few course corrections along the way.
Re: (Score:2)
Remember: Mars is in orbit, so you have to calculate where your landing pad will be after 9 months, taking into consideration planetary rotation and relativistic effects.
Like trying to land a glider on an airborne helicopter pad -- and doing it gently.
Re:Freaking incredible. (Score:5, Funny)
It turns out that space is in metric. Who knew?
Re:Freaking incredible. (Score:5, Funny)
All of space, including most of planet earth. Well, except for some very uneducated areas ;)
Re: (Score:2)
I always tought there were distances there at the US and UK. I mean, as mind blowing crazy that General Relativity is, I don't think it allows any non-metric region.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, except for some very uneducated areas
Does that include the guys who put this thing up there?
Re: (Score:2)
Space metric? No way! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
It turns out that space is in metric. Who knew?
NASA did, and it learned the hard way.
http://articles.cnn.com/1999-09-30/tech/9909_30_mars.metric.02_1_climate-orbiter-spacecraft-team-metric-system?_s=PM:TECH [cnn.com]
Totally Agree (Score:3)
I was somewhat amazed the whole landing worked, so many complex parts that had to work together...
And then like you say - a casual snap shot from above of the thing on descent! Too amazing.
I'll put on several hats just to take them all off for all the NASA engineers on this one. It was a really spectacular success and it was fantastic how well they did at getting visual confirmation right off the bat before it went into radio silence.
Re:Freaking incredible. (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of the story where humans send a robotic probe to another star, and after decades of traveling it finally gets there and beams back the first images. The people at mission control yawn and are hardly excited because they've all seen the images already; during the time the probe was in transit, the aliens from that star already came to earth via warp drive. And the only person in the room who was excited about the whole thing was an alien in attendance, because the aliens have warp technology but they don't have good robotics.
Well if we ever get humans orbiting and living on Mars, these images will seem about as exciting as Columbus's sketches of Bahama island. Just a thought.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So what you're saying is old stuff gets old.
Re: (Score:2)
And they planned that (a couple years ago) so it would be there to take that picture so they can show us just how fscking awesome they really are.
You guys kick ass!
Re: (Score:2)
A 1 megapixel non-color camera that is not sensitive to the background radiation of space, extreme temperatures, and survived re-entry.
How much time do you think it would take to send back a high resolution image? How much CPU power do you think this rover has to be able to scale or process the collision avoidance data from these cameras if the camera were higher resolution??
Clearly you don't have a clue. The probe has a high resolution camera on its mast which was not to be deployed until all systems are c
Image sources (Score:5, Informative)
Tiff images
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/tiff/ [nasa.gov]
XML source file for day 0
http://landingimagecatalog-1450153822.us-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com/landing/images_sol0.xml [amazonaws.com]
Re: (Score:2)
This one is real nice
pl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/surface/sol/00000/opgs/edr/fcam/FRA_397506083EDR_F0010008AUT_04096M_.JPG
Re: (Score:2)
Bad link. If I guess, and try it on photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov, I get a nice old 404. (and verbatim as you have it, also bad)
Re: (Score:3)
oops, missed some copy/paste
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/surface/sol/00000/opgs/edr/fcam/FRA_397506083EDR_F0010008AUT_04096M_.JPG [nasa.gov]
Re: (Score:3)
Color image of lander going down
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00000/mrdi/0000MD9999000036I1_DXXX.jpg [nasa.gov]
Re: (Score:3)
That's actually the heat shield in free-fall.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't quite get (Score:2)
why http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ [arizona.edu] didn't release a sequence of pictures? It'd be so awesome! Perhaps the other ones are blurry ...
Re: (Score:2)
"If HiRISE took the image one second before or one second after, we probably would be looking at an empty Martian landscape," said Sarah Milkovich, HiRISE investigation scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
This might be the only frame they got with Curiosity in view. HiRISE was moving pretty fast over the scene.
Re:I don't quite get (Score:5, Informative)
Photography has come a long way (Score:5, Insightful)
I think something missed in all of this is how powerful imagery is.
Imagine a world without photographs ?
This mission, and ones before it.. highlight how important this invention, photography, is.
We have photographs of this on its chute landing.. this is the second time we've done it.. and we got photographs back as soon as it landed.. This is great... and the excitement of the crew, and the public, upon seeing these images is a testament to how far photography has come in the past 150ish years.
Kudos to all of those who made this happen.. for the science it will do.. and further affirming the power of images in our world..
I'm sure most of you already know this, (Score:3)
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/phoenix-descent.php
The first shot of the sort was this one from the Phoenix lander.
Cheap Mission (Score:5, Informative)
What amazes me is how cheap the entire MSL mission is...
The entire budget was only 4 days in Iraq/Afghanistan, or approx USD$2.5billion.
NASA's entire budget is less than what the US Army spends on air-conditioning in Iraq/Afghanistan ( USD$20 billion ).
I. Kid. You. Not.
Re:Cheap Mission (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right. We can only do one thing at a time. We should focus on more rovers, and tell the Taliban that they're welcome to roll that region back into the Dark Ages again, and do their level best to work their way into more influence in nuclear-armed Pakistan.
Or maybe it is possible to do two things, possibly even three things, at once? In the interests of both practicing fantastic science like this, and endeavoring to show the world that Western Civilization thinks its rude to burn down school houses for daring to talk about it. Nah, that's crazy talk, right?
If I had mod points, you would get one. (Score:2)
Thoughtful analysis untainted by political correctness is getting scarce these days. Which by definition means it's getting more valuable.
Not a troll (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I don't like the Taliban. At all. They're a bunch of lying, autocratic, misogynistic, terrorizing, hypocritical warlord assholes (and a whole lot of other choice words). Yet I wholly agree that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were huge, obvious mistakes from day one.
People tend to get fed up with oppressive governments rather quickly. Given time, they'll take care of them all by themselves, as history has shown repeatedly. Unless, of course, an invading army comes along, bombing your country back to the st
Aren't you ignoring very important detail (Score:2)
"Doing only one thing at a time" in this context is like saying "oh, I can't help my kid construct a Lego house, since I'm already building a real house", duh...
Re:Cheap Mission (Score:5, Informative)
And which mission is the one trying to prevent another entire generation in that region from falling under the control of a bunch of medieval-minded religious thugs...
Neither. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have exactly as much to do with women, education and religious freedom as they have to do with exploring Mars.
Which is to say, nothing at all.
Re: (Score:3)
You're right. We can only do one thing at a time. We should focus on more rovers, and tell the Taliban that they're welcome to roll that region back into the Dark Ages again...
Yeah we should Europe had a dark age and then we turned into you guys and modern day Europe. Maybe the "dark ages"-stage of civilization is important and this whole "we can fix it (with bombing)"-attitude is not completely correct.
and do their level best to work their way into more influence in nuclear-armed Pakistan.
Pakistan controls the Taliban, not the other way around. Pakistan WANTS the Taliban to win because then they have a radical Pashtu controlled country loyal to them.
Re: (Score:2)
posting to undo my incorrect moderation. This is a good post - maybe offtopic and it is sad that it has to be said but never the less it says what needs to be said.
Re: (Score:2)
I used one of my 30+ shell accounts to mod you up because I already commented on this story.
I kid.. I kid...
Re: (Score:2)
And if the US leaves that middle eastern shithole, you can bet with certainty that no kid from that place will ever set foot on another planet.
Re: (Score:2)
This guy is right. Iraq never had universities - there were no phds, engineers or scientists. Hell, they didn't even have roads or their own infrastructure to drill and refine their oil... at least after it all fell apart in the 80's during the peak of involvement, ignore that detail.
The sad reality is that it seems the middle east shithole is only such as result from giants using it as a place to shit.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://costsofwar.org/article/education-universities-iraq-and-us/
When I was being a vocal critic of the war in 2003, it never ceased to amaze me how little of conditions in Iraq Americans actually knew...
Re: (Score:2)
And if the US leaves that middle eastern shithole, you can bet with certainty that no kid from that place will ever set foot on another planet.
Yeah, and?
The world is a harsh and uncaring place, the idea that we can "fix it" or "make it better" is at best needlessly romantic and at worst actually culturally damaging.
There are periods in the developing of a stable civilization/nation where a lot of people have to die and a lot more have to go through unimaginable hell, these periods are important and have to happen.
Key information missing (Score:2)
Was there Cake?
Re:money... (Score:5, Insightful)
Competition s a basic tendency of humans. 2 billion dollars spent on getting an advanced robot to do something extremely difficult is so much better than competing to build more nuclear weapons, stealth drones, and cruise missiles, that disparaging it is counter your and my personal survival. The people who are hyper-paranoid will not stop feeling like all life is a savage competition because you criticise any non-violent competition between peoples groups or nations as not living up to your definition of 'loving'. Instead they will put all their competitive drive into making the whole planet into a smouldering pile of rubble in a misguided and delusional effort to wipe out everyone who even might be a potential enemy. If you want them to stop that, you learn to respect when competition gets focused into technological achievement, excellence in sports, creating art or pure science or even just persuing a harmless hobby, and not just taking care of people. ,every second of every waking day, your responses are not sanely proportionate.
Sure, you can tell them that a civilised country proves it's the freeest and best by building a better and better safety net for its citizens, feeding its poor, finding meaningful work for everyone, educating all citizens, and other such dreams if you want, and some of the hyper-competitive paranoids will listen a little and get on the bandwagon and grow out of being so afraid, but if you keep slamming everything else but basic care of the poor, all you will do is drive those people back into their caves, where they currentlly keep about 3,000 Megatons of very bad solutions to the problem of the poor and all those other things that just might be good in your eyes.
Curiosity is about a lot more than just looking at some rocks, but even if you reduced it to that, how is it in any way morally inferior to spending about the same amount figuring out how to put Cobalt-60 jackets on thermonuclear weapons, just so you can make not only human life extinct but clear the planet of bacterial life as well? Spending 2 billion on preserving the 'vitally important' model railroading hobby is better than building more death machines. An Olympics is better than more instruments of totalitarian population control. Finding a cure for male pattern baldness is better than inventing weaponized Ebola. While we are at it, any of those things are better than rewarding bankers for screwing up everyone else's economy,. If you can waste your energy on sarcasm and insults for a program like Curiosity, just what are you willing to say to the Pentagon procurement offices, the TARP system, or Wall street in general? If you are not screaming at them, at the top of your lungs
Re: (Score:2)
If you take 2,000,000,000 dollars, buying a 10 dollar meal, you could have bought 200,000,000 people meals.
Hunger is a social/political problem. It is not due to a lack of food resources. You could drop $2 billion that way, and the next day, all those people would still be hungry. If you're going to spend $2 billion to stop hunger I can think of, well, about an infinite number of ways to do it that would be more productive than that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Amazing! mark-t has a revelation which he just has to share with the boffins at NASA. If only they had consulted him first...
Heck, these days doesn't black-and-white actually cost *MORE* than color?
No.
A B&W Camera is a colour camera without the Bayer filter. The CCDs generally cost the about same, and are marginally cheaper to make. Colour cameras are also very much less sensitive because they filter the incoming light a lot. Specifically, they filter out all the near-IR which is what the cameras hap
Re: (Score:2)
Bandwidth and processing power. At the moment it has better things to do than send pictures.
But don't worry, it's got a color camera and even a stereo camera, so we'll get better pic soon.