Mars Rover attempting landing tonight - BFD

Maybe we should deploy some of those NASA scientists to fix the economy. I think they could do a better job than the clowns we have in there now.

ROTFLMAO......that's probably right on the money! Suprised the sign doesn't say "You screwed up your planet, go back the F@#K home and leave ours alone!"

LOL. Love the sign BeGreen. Perhaps it is true.

As an ex-scientist, I can appreciate what it took and the level of precision required to pull this off. Sending something to another planet is easy...it can crash on it and simply not work.

Sending something to another planet, have a rocket propelled descent after the supersonic parachute disengages, crane drop off delivery system and everything work afterwards is a different story.

link to the fact sheet on the mission.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/fact_sheets/mars-science-laboratory.pdf

A very amazing piece of equipment.
Who knows what technological break throughs will come of this.

Meme of the day

at long last we will get to see the ruins of the great cities of Barsoom. With any amount of luck we will be able to discover how they were able to harness the 8th and 9th rays of the spectrum to power their mighty flying ships. Ya, I read those Edgar Rice Burroughs books. I did not see the movie though.

I find there is a good bit of cynicism in the fact that a bunch of old school wood burning men/women (wood burning as a source of heat being fairly primitive) have such an interest in a technological feat. Then again, stove technologies are progressing quite quickly. If only I could get my hands on a radioisotope power generator....lol. See, I was right, Nuclear Energy is the way of the future...just look at my icon!

Andrew

Here is why we should continue space exploration http://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-letter-to-a-nun-in-africa/

We need a hobby. People need a hobby. Mars is a hobby, so are pyramids, so is religion. I pick Mars.

After we got past the point of starvation we needed something to do. As a nation we've spent over 900 billion dollars maintaining a fleet of 12 nuclear submarines equipped with warheads for which we've never had an occasion to use. We spend over 50 billion dollars yearly on pets in this country, and we spend more money in America every year on chewing gum (something with almost no purpose) than a 10yr mission to Mars. All the while poor children around the planet are starving to death.

Please people, don't chew gum. Just think how evil it is to support a 20 billion dollar worldwide market devoted to chewing mouths while people go hungry. OH THE SHAME!

How much do they cost?

I just read a book called Thirteen Things That Don't Make Sense by Michael Brooks (my personal list is a lot longer) that went through the Viking probe and how they thought they'd discovered life, then redacted, but then the scientist who thought up the experiment waited 10 years and said the only explaination that makes sense for what they found was that Mars has life. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/16/mars-life_n_1429380.html

This time around we've designed the experiments only to test for "the conditions that will support life" and not try to answer the other question. Hmmmmmm. Why is that?

I'm not saying they're not cool, only trying to quantify how much money that we spend on a host of things. 2.5 billion dollars is not a lot of money to answer questions of this magnitude. I'll give up chewing gum for a year to find out what's on another planet.

Curiosity's first kill

Check this out- 360 pan high res image from Rover. Dang

http://www.360pano.eu/show/?id=731

It's already dirty. Who's going to wash that thing?