SPACE

[tufty]

Excellent!

Oh, and here's some Huygens-Cassini related music : http://www.bad-sector.com/bs/remote.html

[PVB]

*phew*

Full set here:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoen ... index.html

Phoenix Opens Its Eyes

[merman]

Awesome, can't wait for the drilling results...

[lazerwalker]

Absolutely wonderful picture here. It's of Phoenix parachuting down to the surface of Mars, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter . How cool is that!

[Zoot]

Absolutely wonderful picture here. It's of Phoenix parachuting down to the surface of Mars, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter . How cool is that!

That has to be one of the most knob-tingly things I have ever seen. Thanks

[Mark]

Absolutely wonderful picture here. It's of Phoenix parachuting down to the surface of Mars, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter . How cool is that!

Awesome.

It took the description to sell that pic to me because I was being a bit slow, but, yeah, that's really awesome. I'm generally not a fan of humanity, but just occassionally we fucking rock. This is one of those times. More of this sort of thing!

[Firefox]

Absolutely wonderful picture here. It's of Phoenix parachuting down to the surface of Mars, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter . How cool is that!

I'm absolutely gobsmacked by that, I really am.

[WiteWulf]

Wow...that's absolutely stunning. It's one of those things that you've really got to take a moment to really consider before the real awesomeness if it sinks in

[Alarm]

Amazing achievement really.

[Istar]

Desktopped.

[Darkflame]

So this is like...what..first getting a hole-in-one, and then getting another rapidly moving ball to take a photo of the first ball just as its landing in the hole O_o

Frankly, its no one the conspiracy theorists pop up, this stuff is pretty unbelievable.

[axel000]

The BBC poses the question of should we be spending money on space exploration / mars probes, on their "Have Your Say" forums. Predictably a large portion of the population in true ludite form insists that we must first solve all of humanity's problems before spending another dollar / euro on space science.

I have to wonder, do these people have any sense of reality ? So what is going to be this miracle discovery that will solve all the world's problems ? Lets see, what do we have here hmmm..... tribalism, war, poverty, pollution, population control, agricultural output, global warming, illiteracy, religious dogma, nationalism, violence....I could go on and on and on....

The reality is, we are already spending billions a year on all these issues. Different governments of course have different priorities, but this sense that you can either work on the above, or work on pure science is farcical at best. Frankly, its stupid.

I wish there was less stupid in this world. Now thats unfortunately something that you can't fix with education.

[Dio]

Is Mars exploration pure science, though? I dunno.

Both sides have very valid points to make and both sides talk a lot of bad science along the way - for an example on the other side of the fence see the space colonisers, who are dreamers who haven't actually thought about it much (in the absence of dramatic - as in barely conjectured and nothing like current approaches so current 'exploration' is largely irrelevant to that goal - leaps in technology).

[Darkflame]

Space is long term survival, its that simple.
Just because the goal is so far away is more reason to work on it as much as possible now, not less.

Technology dosnt improve magically without you pushing it. Leaps don't happen by sitting back and waiting.
Sure, lots of things invented for other reasons have helped space technology. But that equally goes visa-versa. Where would we be today without satellites?

Arguing against space-travel, investment or research is either short term thinking or just selfishness. ("It dosnt effect my generation, so why should I worry about it")

Dreamers are the only people that ever get humanity anywhere. Even if its not where their aiming, its a good deal better then a standstill.

Is Mars exploration pure science, though? I dunno.

Pretty much pure yes.
If it wasnt, I think we would have had a lot more "visual" informtation.
Video footage from the craft as it lands, high-res photos ect.

Stuff more marketable to the media and public at large.
More like Google's luner rover plans, in fact.

Not that I think thats bad. More public-awareness of space-issues is a good thing.

[Dio]

Space is long term survival, its that simple.
Just because the goal is so far away is more reason to work on it as much as possible now, not less.

Technology dosnt improve magically without you pushing it. Leaps don't happen by sitting back and waiting.
Sure, lots of things invented for other reasons have helped space technology. But that equally goes visa-versa.

This is exactly the sort of wacky argument from the space colonists that is just pure pipe-dream. My guess is that in general it is mostly espoused by people 1. without solid science degrees, 2. with jobs in the field and / or 3. who have the lack of common sense sometimes associated with scientists.

My view has a pretty simple progression:
- Viable colonisation requires one of large-scale interstellar travel (thousands of people and the infrastructure for them to be 100% independent) or terraforming to be viable
- Even negating all other implausible factors, the energy requirement for either of these is not even over-the-horizon science. (Note that even if we get fusion working it does not change this - we're talking ten-plus orders of magnitude deficiencies here)
- We therefore require either completely new (unimaginable) science to either totally change the energy requirement or to supply near-infinite free energy.
- We might possibly discover some of the latter in a lab, or with a telescope, or a particle accelerator. We absolutely will not learn a thing towards those goals by sending bits of clever metal to dig the dust of Mars.
- So if pure science or colonisation is what you want, you shouldn't be looking to the skies now.

Existing space missions are very little to do with pure science; they are almost entirely engineering challenges, and you could almost define engineering as the application of science. I'm not wanting to widdle on everyone's chips, but the colonisation thing really requires new science of the 'magic' class.

All this is not to say I'm dead set against Mars missions et.al. I'm just not blinkered to the (many eminently sensible) arguments that there's an awful lot we could spend quite this much cash on on this planet, and neither should anyone else be. I mean, look at education - right now I hesitate to think there'll be any future science done on this planet since we seem to do everything in our power to encourage kids to want to be actors, producers and managers, and nothing whatsoever to try to get them to do things that are actually useful and difficult...