New Images From Mangalyaan 37
schwit1 writes Indian scientists have released a new set of color images taken by their Mars orbiter, Mangalyaan. Arsia Mons is one of the three giant volcanoes to the east of Mars' biggest volcano, Olympus Mons. Arsia Mons is important for future manned colonization, as there are known caves on its western flanks. In addition, those western flanks show solid evidence of past glaciers, which means that it is very likely that those caves will harbor significant quantities of water-ice, making settlement much easier.
Caves, etc. (Score:4, Interesting)
Why don't we ever send the rovers to cool places like this???
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because bad things always happen in sci fi when you go into a cave. It's the natural equivalent of the red shirt. Hell, the whole damned planet is red!
I would note that you couldn't use solar panels in caves; and communication with Earth would require relay station(s). There are solutions, but they do jack up the costs.
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And have them get stuck in a cave where we don't have radio contact ?
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Because exploring caves is difficult and dangerous work even for the dexterous and adaptable humans. Robo-tech might be just about up to it on earth - but not to making the exploration with a near-zero accident rate, in an unmapped environment, on a weight budget, operating for years without servicing, after spending months in storage.
It's going to take decades of robotic-technology advancement before we can consider something like that. Or a manned mission, which would be ridiculously expensive.
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If NASA would had being the one doing Huygens it would had being a full success. But the project was done by ESA (European Space Agency, in case you are didn't know) and they have a history of reaching the target location, just to end up with a spectacular failure.
Huygens failure was caused by a moron at ESA setting up an unscheduled disruptive test that disabled 50% of the communication channels (just hours before the schedule drop of the prove) and NEVER reseting the system to restart them. The final re
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Because caves don't have sunlight. Or do you think rovers have batteries with unlimited power?
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Curiosity has it's own nuclear reactor.
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So we shall all go into politics? Most technicians would not stand a chance in that rat cage. If you are really interesting in solving these problems, then look into the way how these areas are shaped by politics.
Re:lol, space nutters. (Score:5, Insightful)
"...we already have enough tech to feed a stable world population, so scientists should really be tasked with effective education and resource distribution before..."
Do you seriously believe that this is a *technical* problem?
Let me be blunt. The only reason the world is not fed, clothed, housed, etc. is because there is a significant percentage of the population that does not want that to happen.
This is a social/political problem, not a technical one.
A.
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"Humans are complex machines. Establishing how they work and fixing their faults is a technical problem."
That's one point of view. I prefer this one:
"If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing."
-- John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider.
A.
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If you see humans in this way then you have to address the right technicians to solve the problem. Metal machine people are not the right ones to fix issues in communication and faulty data in the central thinking machine.
The truth is. Our present problems are not technical. They are organizational. To solve them people working in these areas must fix it.
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"The truth is. Our present problems are not technical. They are organizational."
I'm sorry, but no. Our present problem is that as a community, people *suck*. There is no technical, organizational, or practical problem keeping us from feeding, housing, or caring for the unfortunate. We just don't *want* to. People suck.
A.
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No, people don't suck - the truth is, that on a global scale, I don't give a shit what happens to somebody I've never met, will never meet, and don't even know exists, in southeast bumfuck, Vietnam, and likewise, I don't expect that person to give a juicy fart's worth of care to MY existence.
I know this will shock all you "Global Citizens" here on Slashdot, but it's human nature (and in fact, there's some research to support this - google Dunbar's Number sometime) that there's a fairly limited scope of peop
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"However, trying to make "7 billion people are miserable" my personal, relatable problem, is a fool's errand."
Sorry, my cowardly friend, but I never said anything about 7 billion people. That's your straw man, you can keep it.
A convenient small-town example of 'not in my backyard', this reads like a whole lot of suck to me:
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/... [bostonmagazine.com]
The tl;dr summary quote (paraphrased) is "they [the homeless] really would be better served in the next town over.
A.
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Present problem in supporting people with food, clothes, housing, education etc. is not a production problem, but a distribution problem. Therefore, the problem must be solved by politics and economics, and these domains are not doing their job. Tech is not the limiting factor. In Africa, hunger could be dealt with even without food supplies from outside, if all the fertile soil could be used. However, large parts cannot be used because of wars or are destroyed by war. In addition Western subventions and ov
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Africa, hunger could be dealt with even without food supplies from outside, if all the fertile soil could be used
Africa's biggest problem is not a distribution problem. It's the Africans.
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"...but a distribution problem"
I believe you mean well, but using a phrase like this implies we don't know how to distribute our resources, i.e. that is is a technical issue we do not know how to solve. That's not the case - we've been engaging in land wars since the beginning of time - we know how to get stuff where it is needed.
I believe the problem is multi-faceted, but it boils down to:
1) Not my problem
2) Not in my back yard
3) Not with any contribution from me
- all while sitting complacently
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I'll be happy to distribute some of my resources, but only in return for something of equal value.
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Thank you for illustrating the problem so succinctly.
A.
images shut down - anyone have mirrors? (Score:2)
the newspaper has terminated display of the images - does anyone have a mirror site or know an alternative location where they can be viewed?
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pictures here:
https://www.facebook.com/isrom... [facebook.com]
http://www.vipnews.in/index.ph... [vipnews.in]
Re:images shut down - anyone have mirrors? (Score:4, Informative)
Official Site:
http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c2... [isro.gov.in]
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Try slashdot [slashdot.org] :D
(Streisand was here)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:Under the red soil, Mars is blue (Score:5, Funny)
That's not blue, that's white and gold.
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