1/5/2004: Welcome to Mars

[sniglet]

Originally posted by Undertoad
[B
Suggested by elspode. This is the widest IotD ever
posted at 1900 pixels wide, and will cause the terrible
horizontal scrolling that we all hate so much, but for once
it's really warranted.[/b]

Not if your computer has more than one monitor.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Excellent choice UT. History in the making and as Walter Cronkite used to say "And you,....were there.".

[Elspode]

Originally posted by Serk


The reason I've read is that with human cargo, they can't exert the tremendous acceleration and de-celeration G forces that they can put a mechanical probe through, thus a manned mission would have to go slower, plus not take quite as efficient of a route...

Us human's are just too fragile for that.....

There are a number of concerns regarding duration of manned flight to Mars, but most of them are related to efficiency vs flight time vs mass to be transported vs distance to Mars at the time of liftoff. There are plenty of ways to bleed off velocity slowly, and acceleration doesn't have to high to get to Mars...it just gets you there faster because you don't have to aim so far ahead of the planet in its orbit to get there at a slower speed.

The tricky part is figuring out the optimal combination of flight duration (you don't want your astronauts floating around weightless for too long, or they won't be able to do anything when they get there) and mission goals, with a touch of "how long do we stay there" thrown in for good measure.

Humans are more fragile than machines, to be sure, but that isn't the only limitation in a speedy traverse.

[OnyxCougar]

**looks at her watch and waits for tw to rant**

[juju]

Not unless there's a political angle. On the other hand, if he happens to have a space magazine on hand to scan in..

[hermex]

Are we sure it didn't land somewhere in Nevada by accident?

[mrputter]

Not to detract from the coolness of this picture (which I agree is impressive), but has everyone totally forgotten about 1997's <A HREF="http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9707/06/mars.wrap/">pathfinder</A> (which sent its own <A HREF="http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9707/06/mars.wrap/panorama.lg.jpg">panoramas</A> back as well)?

It's just that everyone seems to be going on about how novel this all is -- as if it's the first time -- and nary a word about the sojourner/pathfinder expedition... I tend to wonder...

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's like sex in that the 2nd time is just as cool and in many ways better.

[Beletseri]

I bet the Brits aren't all that happy at the moment.

[Slartibartfast]

I hope they name the rocks something more creative than last time. I really got sick of hearing about Barnacle Bill and friends.

Maybe they should name the rocks after recent celebrity fuck-ups.

Hey, look at Spirit nudging up against Britney Spears.

Or... look at Spirit being fed by Jeff Corwin who is carrying a baby.
He really shouldn't take a child to such a dangerous planet...

[SteveDallas]

Originally posted by mrputter

It's just that everyone seems to be going on about how novel this all is -- as if it's the first time -- and nary a word about the sojourner/pathfinder expedition... I tend to wonder...

Oh, come on!! What do you expect... you want people to remember something that happened seven years ago? You're lucky they remember one scandal du jour after the next one starts.

Anyway. All this Mars business is interesting, but I just hope we're finally able to succeed in landing people on the moon. Now THAT would be a cool accomplishment!!

[deepandchilled03]

I wonder if the Spirit or Opportunity can try and see if the European Beagle made it or not?

[Kitsune]

Originally posted by blue58

So how long do these signals actually take to get to Earth? Radio signals?

If I remember correctly, and dammit I can't find the source, it takes 3.5 minutes to get a command to Mars via radio and 3.5 minutes to get an acknowledgement back from the rover due to distance. So seven minutes after they've sent "move forward", they actually know that it has.

You may have had fun as a kid trying to keep your R/C car from accidentally finding its way into the storm drain on the street -- imagine doing it with that much of a delay! (It also helps, of course, that the rover is intelligent enough to know not to go off of a cliff, into a rock, etc.)

[Kitsune]

...and for anyone interested in trying their hand at the NASA simulator, it has been made public at various university mirrors such as the one below:

ftp://ftp.net.usf.edu/pub/maestro

I haven't tried it, yet (can't FTP from work), but a friend explained that it it rather irritatingly slow, being a 40Mb java application. Yuck!

[chrisinhouston]

My inlaws live in Arizona in general area of the greater Mohave Desert basin. When I saw the first pictures from Mars I told my wife that her dad had sent us some pics of their backyard for New Years!

She was not amused.