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NASA
An artist's conception shows NASA's Curiosity rover, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, which is about the size of a Mini Cooper automobile.
Scientists have decided to point NASA's next Mars rover toward a mountain of layered minerals inside Gale Crater, after a process they compared to picking a favorite flavor of ice cream out of 30 choices. One big reason Gale won out is because it's like Neapolitan ice cream, offering a yummy combination of flavors.
Like the strawberry-vanilla-chocolate ice cream, the 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mound inside Gale Crater offers multiple possibilities — intriguing geological sites at different elevations that could document a billion years of Mars' climate history, and perhaps its habitability as well.
"Gale Crater is interesting to explore because it crosses what we think is a major time boundary on Mars that’s recorded in its mineral history," Brown University's John Mustard, a planetary scientist who helped with the early stages of the selection process, said in an emailed comment. "That boundary marks a change from an early wet, hospitable environment that would have been suitable for life to a middle period where conditions may have become more hostile. We believe that at Gale Crater, we have located that boundary where life may have sprung up and where it may have been extinguished."
In a statement, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said the Curiosity rover could shed light on Mars' future as well as its past. "Curiosity not only will return a wealth of important science data, but it will serve as a precursor mission for human exploration to the Red Planet," he said.
NASA
This artist's conception shows the Curiosity rover being lowered toward the Martian surface on tethers from a "sky crane" system.
$2.5 billion mission to Mars
The Curiosity rover, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, is a mobile robot as big as a Mini Cooper automobile, bristling with scientific instruments and a camera capable of taking high-definition, full-color video at a rate of more than five frames per second.
The $2.5 billion mission is due for launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on an Atlas 5 rocket, as early as the day after Thanksgiving, with landing on Mars set for August 2012. The rover is designed to be lowered to the Martian surface by a rocket-powered "sky crane" system that's never been used before for interplanetary probes.
NASA expects Curiosity to operate for a "warranty period" of one full Martian year, the equivalent of two Earth years, and to rove for 13 miles (20 kilometers or more). John Grotzinger, Curiosity's mission scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, estimates that it would take about two years for the radioactivity-powered rover to work its way up to the summit of Gale Crater's mountain — and he's already hoping for as much of a decade's worth of extra exploration.
After all, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars were designed to operate for 90 days — but seven and a half years after they landed, Spirit only recently gave up the ghost, and Opportunity is still going strong. "If history is a predictor of the future, we expect to have future life to go," Grotzinger said today at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, where the site selection was announced.
The 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) Gale Crater should provide a spectacular backdrop for Curiosity's cinematography. Scientists compared the terrain to the Grand Canyon and Utah's Monument Valley. The mountain inside the crater rises higher than any peak in the 48 contiguous U.S. states, but it has channels that should give Curiosity a chance to make a slow ascent to the top.
"This might be the tallest mountain anywhere in the solar system that we can climb with a rover," Grotzinger said.
How the choice was made
The selection process leading to today's announcement started five years ago, when more than 100 scientists sifted through about 30 potential landing sites. Four top candidates were selected in 2008, and earlier this year, that "Final Four" was whittled down to two: Gale Crater as well as Eberswalde Crater, which scientists believe contains the remains of an ancient river delta. (Eberswalde was the favorite of Cosmic Log readers in an unscientific poll we offered last week. Sorry, folks.)
The final recommendation was made by the Curiosity mission's science team and approved by senior NASA officials. Grotzinger said choosing from among the Final Four sites was a matter of taste, like choosing between vanilla and chocolate ice cream. "When you come down to four landing sites, that's basically what it comes down to. ... In the end, we picked the one that felt best," he said.
NASA
Orbital imagery shows Gale Crater, with the projected landing zone for Curiosity indicated by a yellow ellipse measuring 20 by 25 kilometers (12.4 by 15.5 miles). A 5-kilometer-high (3-mile-high) mountain can be seen just above the landing zone in this oblique, computer-generated view.
NASA's strategy for past Mars probes has been to "follow the water," on the assumption that areas where liquid water once flowed would be prime places to look for evidence of past habitability. In NASA's announcement, Grotzinger said that was one of the factors that made Gale Crater so attractive.
"It’s a huge crater sitting in a very low-elevation position on Mars, and we all know that water runs downhill," he said. "In terms of the total vertical profile exposed and the low elevation, Gale offers attractions similar to Mars’ famous Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system."
'Great novel' focuses on Martian past
The other keys to Gale's appeal are the minerals layered throughout the 3-mile-high mountain inside the crater.
Curiosity will be targeted to land on an alluvial fan that was apparently formed from sediments carried down the mountainside by water. Then the rover will make its way up to higher levels, where orbital observations have spotted the types of clay minerals and sulfates that are typically formed by the interaction of rock and water.
Different types of geological formations are accessible at different elevations, reflecting different epochs in Mars' history. Grotzinger said Curiosity could survey samples from a vertical range extending for hundreds of meters (yards), far more than the roughly 20 meters of vertical range sampled by the Opportunity rover. He compared the vertical variation to chapters in a book, and said Gale Crater promised to be a "great novel."
Planetary scientist John Grotzinger takes you on a guided tour of Gale Crater.
Curiosity's instruments are capable of detecting organic carbon in ground-up rock samples, and Grotzinger said the rover has "a shot at potentially discovering organic compounds." He emphasized that the instruments cannot definitively pick up the presence of life. However, confirming the presence of organic compounds on Mars would represent a significant advance in the decades-long search for evidence of life on the Red Planet.
Dawn Sumner, a geologist at the University of California at Davis, said she and her colleagues were looking forward to the adventure. "Geologists like climbing up cliffs," she said at the National Air and Space Museum, "and we get to go to those places with this rover for the first time on Mars."
For the next couple of decades, robots will be the only earthly things climbing up those cliffs, but that may not always be the case. NASA's current vision for space exploration calls for sending astronauts to Mars in the mid-2030s, and some believe the job could be done earlier. When, if ever, will humans follow in Curiosity's wheel tracks? What might they find? Feel free to add your comments below.
More about Mars:
- Slideshow: Mars rover preps for duty
- How a long mission to Mars could kill you
- Cosmic Log archive for posts about Mars
- Mars resource page at msnbc.com
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
I just suggested to @MarsCuriosity to head for Galle instead! #ThePowerOfTwitter
Link to Galle Excerpted by newsvine :(
Hope she lands safely. Still not sure about that skycrane...
Galle is still to hot still, anything out there is fried to sterilization. That 2.5 Billion would be worth it if they went farther toward the icey poles, where the frozen H2O is melted by the hot sun. Even with bombardment from solar radiation, life may exist where there is liquid water. Now I am no scientist, but to find even the smallest of lifeforms on our nearest neighbor would keep research "flowing"
I also hope the skycrane works properly. I'm excited to see what curiosity will show us (assuming she lands succesfully).
I voted for Eberswalde Crater, but I think both are intriguing places to investigate.
So, if life did exist beyond a shadow of a doubt on Mars in its past then would we be able to ascertain whether or not life on Earth is migratory and came from Mars on ejecta?
Question: once the skycrane lowers Curiosity to the ground, will it fly off and take pictures and do some studies of it's own?
It's up there flying. Why not? I know there won't be much fuel left, but do something with what it has.
Tony:
No, it will fly off so that when it runs out of fuel, it will crash away from the rover.
I'd be surprised if there wasn't some sort of photographic data being collected and transmitted on during the main descent phase of the landing. I would think that would only add to whatever data the MRO and others have on the landing site. Also, I think it'd be good to have at least one camera on the skycrane pointed down along the umbilical toward the MSL just to see how that process unfolds in the actual mission. That would be pretty valuable data, in my opinion.
telemetry is far more valuable for that, video would just be for the viewing audience.
Right, and the viewing audience is important, if for no other reason than financial and societal support of the programs. I think showing the American people all our missions in HiDef is a very important part of the space program. We see a lot of images and some videos but I think NASA could really benefit from some serious Public Relations help. They do pretty well already, I just think they could do better. And in my opinion that would help to garner more broad support from the American people.
The question is, is the value of that feed worth the cost, which would be quite high considering the data rate between here and mars. It would squeeze out other data being returned.
The rational for this kind of landing system of seems to be a self orienting descent system. It is quite remarkable in its simplicity, actually. If it proves successful it could be used almost anywhere in the solar system. The only things which need to be controlled are the reentry orientation, the ignition point, the descent rate, and the final moment of release. My compliments, I hope it works. - RC
True, true.. When funding projects is such an issue we'll always have to make those choices. Always have to side on the part of science. But I still believe showing the average Americans interesting videos of what NASA does is a very important thing that doesn't happen (at least not to my satisfaction) now. It may sound like I'm advocating spending a lot of money just to show the "slack-jaws" a bit of science (and I think that's a a fairly accurate way to describe what I want to do).. but if we can get those so-called "slack-jaws" excited about the space program that will pay off in many ways, most importantly I think it would really help the funding issue. It all goes back to the "ignorant carrying big sticks"... we need those sticks to be on our side, even if they are ignorant. ;-)
Well I am not sure what the current data rate for transfer is (or even the data transfer rate range as it would vary). The feasibility would depend on that, and the data requirements of the specific compressed digital format. From an engineering/science standpoint, the only thing that would be needed is the telemetry.
Jonathan, I sure hope they did not put any cameras on the new rover, it would be a shame if all those pictures interfered with the data stream.
That was my point. While it is flying off to "die", why can't it take pictures of the area (arial photographs, closer than satellite images, could help in planning routes). Other instruments could measure atmospheric conditions, etc. For that matter, why wasn't it designed to land after lowering the probe, so it could be a stationary probe? More bang for the buck.
There is no need to put a camera on the 'crane' because it only flies away a few kilometers but also because there is a satellite in orbit round mars right now that takes pictures of the surface, measures atmospheric conditions etc... That satellite is what currently transmits data from the rovers on the planet now and earth.
Jonathan, you seem to lack the vision necessary to get double work out of systems that are being sent sent millions of miles away.
I'm sure glad you are not part of the space program. Especially since they've been asked for years to do more with less.
Regardless, having a satallite taking pictures of clouds and sandstorms is not the same as having a probe in the atmosphere, just as having a probe is not the same as having boots on the ground. Taking images from orbit is not the same as pictures from a aircraft flying close to the target. Things can look quite different from orbit.
tony:
What makes you think I am not part of the 'space program'. The 'putting a camera on the "crane"' bit would take up FAR too much bandwidth between mars and the earth, which would crowd out all other forms of actual scientific research that is going on.
Also, the orbiting satellite will give you far more information on climate conditions. Weather conditions, which is what you would get on the sky crane, not climate, isn't really all that useful to anyone but the people in the area. And you can get that from the rover itself. Remember, the sky crane, when it flies away is NOT going to go back into orbit, it doesn't have the fuel for that, it is only going to fly a few thousand feet away then crash. ANY information that it may glean is not going to be of any scientific use.
But hey, I guess that me thinking this stuff out shows a lack of vision. Next pathetic insult to an engineer please!!!
You continue to concentrate on "camera" when other instruments could be put on the vehicle, the vehicle could land, and be a stationary lander, as I mentioned above.
But I see your great engineering intellect didn't picked up on that.
I never mentioned anything about it going back into orbit and I'm not sure where you got that idea.
tony:
well the camera bit was the original comment, to video the dropping of the rover and then the fly away.
As to instruments. In that scenario, you would need to a) add more fuel, b) add a landing system for the crane. Both of those add weight, which would take away from instrumentation and scientific payload in other parts of the mission. End result, to do what you want on the crane would take away from science in the rover.
Margins are so tight on space missions that there is very little room to do anything.
There is a funny scene in the tv series 'from the earth to the moon' where for Apollo 15, the astronaut was talking about taking a telephoto lens and a rake to help them on the mission, and the response was 'we are already at our weight limit' and the astronaut said, 'well lets just take out some of the reserve propellant' (which is basically gas in the gas tank. There just isn't the room (weight wise) to do it.
It seems to me that to hover and lower the vehicle to the planet would take more fuel than just landing the craft.
Also, they've talked about putting a flying probe "on" Mars before. I see this as a potential test of the feasibility, since it's there anyway.
Also, it should have instrumentation as is. No real need for landing gear, as it just needs to set down gently enough.
Besides, the whole system has the MARDI descent imager to image the the surrounding terrain from 3.7 kilometers to about 5 meters above the surface, taking pictures at 5 frames per second for a couple of minutes. So much for images causing bandwidth issues.
The hover is part of the mission profile anyways. I am not sure why they didn't just land the crane and then lower the rover, but I am sure in their detailed design documents they have the reason for that. Even so, why would that instrumentation be of any more use than the instrumentation that is on the rover. It is just redundancy (and you need another antenna to uplink the data for transmission back to earth).
Pictures can be compressed much more tightly than video (which was the original comment) because you don't need to worry about motion artifacts. Also the initial part of the mission will be checkout so not much scientific data will be sent back. I am pretty sure that the feed coming back is pretty much filling up the available bandwidth.
Again, all a MASS consideration. And everytime someone asks these things, it all about whose other science experiments are going to be taken off the mission.
Most of the comments above mention pictures, and the few I saw that mentioned video seem to have been used in place of pictures.
Five frames per second is essentially video, if anyone cares to run them in order.
I'll give you the additional antenna, though most of the data is relayed through the orbiters, so there's not much direct sending of data to Earth.
I'm not saying data from the "lander/crane" would be any more valuable. It would be in addition to. Why send Spirit and Opportunity when one would do? Why send Viking 1 and Viking 2? The point being, why not send a stationary lander along with a rover? If not now, why not plan it for the future? Especially since sending probes is relatively rare.
Personally, I would like to see rovers mass produced and sent to several locations of the planet. Build a chasis, add common instruments and maybe a slot or three for area specific instruments (though that may not be necessary) if you need different items for the equator versus the polar regions.
usually when you see multiple vehicles, it is because they would have been built anyways. I am not sure why this new rover is a single vehicle. The cost to make it is in the first unit. Subsequent units do not cost anywhere near as much (same thing with Voyager 1 & 2). I believe most of the pioneers were also built and launched in pairs though that may not be true for them all.
I like the idea of building two of them. It gives you bigger bang for the buck. Something that we keep hearing about in terms of complaints about NASA programs. Well the solution is to build more of them. Those development costs get spread out over multiple units.
As for the specific reasons for design decisions on this particular rover program, I am not privy to that information, but it always ends up being tradeoffs between mass/cost/schedule. You can't fit everything on it, you can't pay for everything, and there just isn't enough time to put everything on it.
Oh, well yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let's park a multi million dollar rover in a crater. FFS.
Setting down in the Valles Marineras would have made a lot more sense.
Multi-BILLION dollar rover, actually. And if you're worried about it getting out of the crater then why would you want to put it in the biggest canyon in the solar system? I'd like to see Mariner Valley investigated as much as anyone but your comment didn't make much sense to me.
Also there's no guarantee we could communicate with it down in that great gorge of a canyon. Probably couldn't!!
WOW! Their taking the challenge! Spirit kinda scared me off of Gale Crater (with the broken wheel and getting caught in the Mars mud going up a hill) but I think Gale Crater was the more interesting site compared to Eberswalde. This is going to be very interesting. Can't wait to watch the landing coverage on Mars!! :)
Agreed! That landing, if successful will be a major technological achievement.
On Earth life began over 3.7 billion years ago but didn't thrive on earth's surface until 700 million years ago. Remember life on earth may have first evolved from directly under the surface as some scientist believe.
Hope they find something moving around at Gale directly under the surface like they may have found at the Phoenix Landing site. Remember the real reason that NASA scientist couldn't find organic chemistry before was because they weren't digging deep enough, UV's kills most things not protected by water ice up to 1 meter below the surface because of the thin atmosphere doesn't protect the surface from intense UV's from the sun.
My curiosity inspired me to make thousands of color images from the raw images beamed down from Mars to the JPL, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and I made some time lapse movies from all the microscopic images for the search for microscopic life at the Opportunity, Spirit and Phoenix Landers sites, I think I found something moving around in the microscopic imager at the Phoenix Landing site here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhfSjJeQf58.
The Phoenix Landing science team claimed that they found some very interesting results at the Phoenix landing site that pointed to organic chemistry but all of them were dismissed as inconclusive, even though the Phoenix Landing team claimed that at the Phoenix Landing site had all the ingredients to sustain life as we know it is directly under the surface below the Lander. Remember the moon rocks NASA scientist claimed they found traces of water but dismissed that because how can they be water on the moon with no atmosphere? Today they found evidence of water ice all over the moon, water ice under the soil heated would make water from the build up of water vapor and gasses released when heated by the sun, this they found to be the case at the Phoenix Landing site.
You are thinking like an Earthling. Who's to say that alien life might thrive in UV light?
"Who's to say that alien life might thrive in UV light?"
I agree with that but what NASA is looking for is organic life, carbon based. All life as we know it on earth is carbon based. We are looking for organics before we call it life. On Mars in the polar region you shouldn't have to dig to deep to find organic because most of the time the surface is covered with water ice and dry ice, frozen CO2, which protects the top layer of soil from UV's. UV's destroys organics, that's why they are having a hard time of finding organics on Mars. NASA scientist wouldn't identify it as life if they can't verify that it was carbon based even if it cussed us out and flashed us a peace sign then asked to be taken to our leader.
It is looking for 'our form' of life, because, for better or for worse, that is the only form of life we know about.
I do agree though that looking for organic chemistry as some proof of life is pointless. All organic chemistry is, is chemistry that involves carbon. It is distinct because it allows for the formation of complex chains. (yes this is a very simplistic view of it). It is however a start. It isn't like scientists can build a massive laboratory complex in a few thousand pound vehicle.
I hope that they didn't forget to account for a possibility that one or more of those "sky crane" retrorockets could fail at any time during the descend or prior to it. Therefore it would be wise to have a triple-sourced sensor array for health-check scripts installed in the sky crane's on-board computer to compensate for a possible failures using the remaining functional retrorockets. Failure to compensate or to adequately protect the descend and payload may result in catastrophic consequences. Do they have a plan "B"? Is there some kind of a parachute aboard? God help us!
I hope this rover has a working microphone, I want to hear Martian wind (-:
I thought viking already recorded that.
It is such a breath of fresh air to have something to truly look forward to again, with the ending of the Space Shuttle program and so much of our space program left in shambles from budget cuts. Nice to have something to lift our spirits, hopes and dreams for future space exploration endeavors. I am so stoked that this sweet big rover will have a more reliable power source to keep roving and not have the threat of Martian dust fouling solar panels. It is just fantastic to feel that spark of hope and that Curiosity will take us to a whole new level of exploration - this sky crane is going to be a true acheivement in engineering - man - if they can pull this off - I can't wait to see what things our future in space holds - just what will we dream up next! This will be WONDERFUL!
There's plenty to look forward to. Check out JPL's Dawn site. Dawn is exploring Vesta now. That's just one example. Would five more shuttle visits to the ISS really make that much difference to you? The shuttle was expensive and limited in its capabilities and we've run out of useful things for humans to do in space. We're taking a much needed respite from manned spaceflight. Regards....
The viewing public is precisely who nasa serves, something I think a lot of big government directors forget. I hope cosmic log does at least three articles on just the skycrane system alone before the landing, and don't be afraid to give us technical details, Us cosmic log readers LOVE technical detail!, and since there are young readers around, I also would like to say it'll be good for them to read stuff that gives them reason to SEEK knowledge, thats a good thing. I read the big E's book the first time wilst in first grade!!, what I did not understand set me on a lifelong quest to understand, of course now that I know the cosmic constant is a fudge factor..we'll save that for a later post....Some organisms on this planet have built protection measures for UV, we must always remember that life as we know it is highly adaptable, and life as we do not know it is most likely adaptable too. Somewhere on that planet is a mud layer with what we would call worms, at least that's the theory I posist. Such an organism would be an extremophile though...and to wit, if it's organic structure can withstand the cold unkowns of mars, I suspect it would also be more tolerant of a meteor strike driven ride to another planetary body. The early timeline seems to me to be more inline of an expanded solar heliosphere (replete with an extended goldilocks zone). We will see if that pans out or not. I too favored an area closer to olympus but they got the stick in the air finally, now I want them (nasa) to RUN LIKE HECK WITH IT!! I have learned to wait though, they may have other hunches that puts the rover in the crater that are, in ben franklins words, not tested for display, yet. I surely respect their hunches, if they have any. It would be neat if the thing could pick up some hot rocks and toss them in the burner when it's power source starts depleting, I would of liked to see the engineered range be more on the order of 200 miles (OR MORE!) and a companion (like astrobot) with some spare parts to keep the buggy moving...or just plain get out and push, if the need arises. Perhaps thoughts for the next mission. We are way behind schedule here people, we should already have a moon station and a national aerospace plane transiting between earth and alpha moon base one, to catch up we gotta pressure our politicians to get the heck out of the way. At this rate I expect the next admin will continue the status quo of an ectasy of fumbling (the bunch of budgies)...after that we will be forced to get back in the manned space race by matter of embarrasement...in between I see more excuses to cut programs and slide agendas further back. This is not a part time hobby the human race has acquired to satisfy boredom. This really is survival. We have no idea what may lurk ahead in our future so we must seek it out fearlessly, for as nature has so often pointed out our folly, IT WILL SURELY FIND US!! I am not saying a silicone jesus alien race is out there, I am saying that if we sit here and do nothing, eventually some event will make nothing out of us. What ever caused the supposed mass extinctions will happen again. We need to know what, why and most importantly WHEN!!...not knowing that, we are in time and place where statistical risk analysis is really just anybodys guess. GO NASA GO!!
Posters like a few on this board, the Government should stop spending my money on this junk, is why we don't see more from NASA.
This will be a wonderful achievement and I hope all goes well. I nominate Harry Reid to be the first man sent to Mars.
Well, here we are again with a probe going to Mars that is specifically designed NOT to look for life, past or present. Like every machine we have sent since the Viking missions, the MSL will NOT be capable of identifying the very thing we claim to seek, but are apparently afraid of finding.
This unfortunate circumstance goes hand in hand with promised manned missions to the red planet that date back to, and have been continually pushed back since the end of Apollo. With each mission concept, realization is always just over the horizon of time... and then when we begin to draw close, it is shoved back out of sight once again.
For those of us who were alive to see man landing on the moon, there is now zero chance we will live to see a man on Mars. And, chances are only slim that the generation that follows us will get to realize this dream. Things don't rate much better for even a robotic mission that will do more than mimic the movie character, Wall-E.
There is a perfect vacuum where vision and daring should exist. This is due to having arrived at a place in time where our science has become as complacent in itself as religion is in concepts of faith.
So, here is where we are and here is where we will stay.
Not true. From NASA:
I wouldn't say "zero" chance, but I would agree that it is very unlikely in my lifetime - yes. (And I plan on living a good long time.)
"Where we are" is patient, continuing robotic exploration of Mars, by NASA, by ESA, by JAXA, and by Roscosmos. Each new mission builds upon what was learned on the the previous missions. Planetary science moves forward.
Mars has been there for 4.5 billion years. In the next 100 years we'll have Mars pretty well sorted out.
Yes, I also want it all, and I want it now. I'd love to send twice, thrice, or even four times as many robotic probes as we do now. I'd love to see "boots on the ground". With the current financial situation it ain't going to happen. So, I will be happy with the GREAT deal that we've learned in the past 40 years, and patiently wait for what comes down the road in the next 40.
Cheers! ~Michael (AFM★Radio / Astronomy.FM)
YAY!!! Go Michael!!
NASA scientists are wasting money by looking at rocks. What should be planned is a visit near to either of the Martian polar ends where there is visible water ice. An area like the Chasma Boreale where the very chilled ice meets the very hot sun can only mean one thing...liquid H20. Any water resource on another planet can offer a lifetime of data for analysis in ranging fields from the geology to the microbiology (YES, LIFE!) on this alien planet.
Sheesh!!! what an idiot....
i love any info about space all ways hv every since the age of 5 im 64 im always in awe and looking up its fascinating and real but======weare suffering down here and 300bill can help us out of our situation here on earth takecare of home first. then deal with the other issues at hand=its like trouble in the world financially and no jobs no roof over our heads and here comes this lexus yu buy==prioritys huh space will be here if we keep on the same misfunded route ==we wont
Rosetta, unfortunately there will always be "poor folk", and diseases, its the human condition. We need the inspiration that space exploration/scientific discoveries provides. the miniscule amount of moneys spent on these endevours pales in comparision(sp?) to the social and defence parts of our national budget...
One wonders why "just the facts" even bothers to read/comment. Yo dude, If you don't like space exploration/ science, get the f**K off our page oh and btw..... Stfu! To the rest of you, sorry for the vulgarity, some people make my blood boil....
just the facts,
and the fact that boeing. lockheed (which gets 100% of its business from government by the way, it has NO material civilian business) is dependent on NASA for the basic aeronautical research that it does has no meaning to you right?
Just the facts:
NASA does a LOT more than just space. Look at the name, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Most of the basic safety research for airline safety is being done by NASA. Most of the basic Aeronautical reasearch (yes we are still doing research in that area) is done by NASA. It isn't just space. So, as I said, Boeing, with its big airline business is dependent on the fundamental research that is done by NASA. This has NOTHING, I repeat, SWEET FRACK ALL, to do with space.
And as for your assertion, hey, if you want the nation to look inward again, fine, seriously man, I don't care. At least then the rest of the world can no that the US can be ignored. And when discovery's are made, and people ask why isn't the US doing this stuff like we used to, you can look at your own attitude.
Also, NASA's budget is like less than 1/10th of 1% of the entire US budget. I would be much more tired of the TRILLION dollars plus that is going into the biggest piece of flying junk called the F35 over its life. Over 60 billion dollars into missile defence that can be mathematically proven to not work, the 800 billion that has gone into the F22. At 20 billion a year, NASA actually offers a really good deal especially since only about half of that goes into the space program.
All that money and I still don't have a hover craft???!!!
Damn!! What's it going to take??
I used to think it was funny why we were looking for life on other planets. Then it struck me that, however weakly important it is, we are wondering mainly if we are alone in the universe or not.
There are three answers to this question:
1. We are alone.
2. There are aliens, but we will not ever see them.
3. There are aliens, but they are 'evil'.
If (1) is true, we better start getting along with each other or we will destroy ourselves. (Should we nuke Iran, and send the SEALS after Ghadaffi et al.?)
If (2) is true, all religion must make a few new changes of ideas. (Should we try to find life elsewhere, and get our butts together to do so?)
If (3) is true, we must have weapons or we will die. (Should we just prepare for galactic warfare?)
I have read a lot of sci-fi pondering all the possibilities, and the bottom line is this debt crisis we are in is purely fictitious. We need to revalue human life. Every human born should be valued as a lender to the national and world-value. Enough of this bickering. Let's get our act together humans. I am running out of faith, but Curiosity I still have --- appropriate name.
It is easy to be an armchair philosopher, but seriously folks, we got to get along, somehow. It's like voting on how to raise the debt-ceiling of the U.S. No one wants to give in to their ideological standpoint.
An armchair philosopher? Better to be a standup philosopher and work Ceasar's Palace.
Is that in Rome?
Decades until humans can climb these cliffs? Inexcusable. Read Robert Zubrin's book, "The Case For Mars". We could be on our way already, cheaply, perfectly safely, and much, much more efficiently. Anyone who thinks more rovers are necessary before a manned mission can be mounted hasn't done the homework, or doesn't have the cajones. All that's necessary is the will, and the bravery that marked the Apollo missions. Oh, and a cessation of these stupid "How a mission to Mars could kill you" MSN articles.
I told my wife (when she was my girlfriend, ten years ago) that every generation has been galvanized by a war. I'd hoped mine would be galvanized by sending men to Mars. Instead of science and exploration, we got religious intolerance and jingoism instead. I only hope my daughter's generation can make the leap mine failed to make.
Dave, we should have already have been on Mars sending back mineral shipments and Martian soil to earth as well as creating greenhouses on Mars from which to grow plants with. Not to mention using Geo-Thermal tapping techniques as well as fracking procedures to break the layers of Mars planet apart that would then allow us to penertrate the core of Mars. Once penetrated various proceedures for adding mass to the core which would burn up similar to how adding wood to a fire increases the heat would then cause an increase in core pressure. The increase in core pressure would cause Mars Quakes that would allow for techtonic plate movement that like on Earth would then allow for water tables and magma tubes to course through the layers of Martian soil. The unused conduits would also be used for vents from the core of the planet that would introduce core specific gases into the atmosphere that would also cause other various reactions to occur that like here on Earth would create storms that would help to continue the life cycle on Mars after large amounts of Saturnian Ice have been used to flood the surface of Mars with water.
No, we haven't. The only bits of Mars that are on Earth are meteorites, blasted from the Martian surface ages ago, which have found their way here.
No greenhouses have been built on Mars. In fact, introducing Earth life onto Mars, contaminating the Martian environment, would be a violation of international treaty (Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty - 1967, as signed by 125 countries).
The remainder of the post details engineering that is well beyond current technology, and is therefore science fiction.
Michael, does Article IX essentially outlaw a human landing on Mars? My guess is that it does, but it will conveniently be repealed or ignored when the day comes. Survive!
Oh, are we obligated to respond if non-Earthlings land on Mars? :)
@DarnThatDream - yours is a good point that has been conveniently glossed over. We are obligated to prevent forward AND backward contamination (from Earth > Mars, as well as from Mars > Earth).
Our robotic probes are sterilized and baked to make them as germ-free as possible. As brave and as hardy as our astronauts are, asking them if we may bake them until sterilized is more than just "the right stuff".
So, Michael, are you saying we might send our astronauts to Mars half-baked?
Ha!
The best place to look for signs of carbon life might not be where everyone would think to look. Looking at the polar caps for life because there is frozen water is good place to look. But any viable life will need a sustained area of heat. Maybe looking for life near Mars' equator would be the best location. On Earth the equator is the hottest location on the planet. On Mars the hottest location should also be the equator.
Bravo! (or is that bravado?)
The Curiosity Rover and Sky Crane could be used in commerical activies. Lets say for instance a very bad flood occurs and people are reported missing. The Sky Crane is launched into orbit over the area where the flooding has occured. The Sky Crane then would deploy several containers of emergency supplies that include a survival raft along with food for a week. The emergency container would be remotely controlled at a seperate location by a human that would guide the emergency container to a location where it could be secure to a stationary home taht has not washed away or a tree. After being secured to the tree a remote camera would be deployed from the container that would watch for survivors. There would also be a strobe light that would flash to alert any survivors to the location of the emergency container.
Just one more advance for the cause of saving humnaity that has come from the necessity of reaching into the unknown.
Stick that in pipe and smoke it KISS crowd and those who would say let them die because it is cheaper to to let them die.
you can do that with a C130 or a C17.
Or a REAL Skycrane.
Unlike Mars, Earth has a substantial atmosphere. We don't need to send billion dollar rockets, with very short "time on target" ability, to do what helicopters already do.
Riiiight. As opposed to spending a billion dollars to perhaps save a life or two, it would be cheaper to deploy the right tool for the job - helos - and save hundreds of more lives for far less cost.
Another use here on Earth for the Sky Crane rover would be that it could be used for search and rescue missions of disabled ships or planes. The Sky Crane would be deployed at high altitude from a C-130. The Sky Crane would then deploy to the area in question ,deploy it's surface recon drones that would then be able to scan the suface for wreckage as well as submerging under the surface of the water to look for wreckage.
Still another use could be to deploy the Sky Crane into forest fires where the Crane would deploy fire fighters into the ehart of the beast or special rovers that have fire foam extinguisher systems that could then be sent to the heart of the fires to put them out more rapidly than fighting the fire from the outside in.
Once again innovation coming from space exploration.
I'm not sure it would replace helicopters in most instances, but in areas where rotors could be a problem, like the side of a cliff, it could be quite handy.
prop blast is enough fun. how about a face full of rocket exhaust for that extra-memorable rescue?