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A Spot For Beagle On Mars
bitva writes: "A landing site has been chosen for the 2003 UK Mars mission. Here's the finer details." Beagle 2, being built now in the UK, will sample air and soil of the red planet, looking for evidence of Martian life. They even have a nice Minesweeper-looking map illustrating the ellipse within which the Beagle must land, in "Isidis Planitia, a large flat region."
The name "Beagle" (it's actually called the Beagle 2) is a tip of the hat to the great explorer/scientist C. Darwin. In 1831 Darwin joined the HMS Beagle as the ship's naturalist, much to his fathers consternation, who said to him "it's a wild scheme and no good would come of it".
Of course the observations made on that particular voyage of 170 years ago would be used to write "On the Origin of Species" and subsequently turn the western world on it's head with the realization of Evolution.
Hence, the high hopes for revolutionary discovery that lead to the probes name "Beagle 2".
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
the distance the moon, is only 500,000 miles round trip dude.
Of all the places on Mars to explore, it seems like the Face would be a better target than others. Maybe they are just afraid of something happening like in "Mission to mars". :)
Chris
I've never been to China, but my friend claimed to have been. He showed me a video of him in China.
Of course I didn't believe him.
How could someone travel that far? Everyone knows you'd get eaten by sea monsters on the way.
Seems they cute the funding for the Mars Society web site already :-(
-Magnus
*nod* This is a very good case for always making sure what specs your contractors are working to. No doubt with the media attention that the NASA goof (well, contractor goof, but NASA missed it too) received, the Brits are triple-checking everything.
:P
It still might fail, as nothing is 100% certain, but it won't be because of measurement conversions. This time, the alien intelligences living beneath the surface of Mars will have to do their own dirty work!
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Another way to look at it is that, of the whole aerospace industry in the US, NASA is the only entity which uses metric units -- everyone else uses what we refer to as "US" units (sometimes called the "English system"). The Lockheed thruster calibration was done with US units -- as always -- and NASA didn't bother to check (they also didn't bother to cross-check after several course corrections didn't give the desired results... there "wasn't enough time or money" to do that).
I've worked in this industry for a long time; the only time I've used metric units was on NASA projects, and then conversion to metric was the last thing done. NASA is the odd man out, when it comes to units. If you accept the argument that "everybody else does it this way," you have to decide which "everybody" you're talking about: the world vs. the US, or US aerospace industry vs. NASA. If the whole aerospace industry were to switch to metric today, I guarantee you there'd be many years worth of problems like the loss of the Mars Observer -- and some of 'em would involve people, not robotic spacecraft.
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
Don't you mean 30'x -30'? You've got your minus signs in the wrong place!
---- Just another spud server.
An experiment (probably futile) in replying to an AC:
Atheist lies
The parent article was just stating historical fact, a matter of record, really. And besides, "Atheist" is no longer pejorative, so this isn't even a good flame.
I, for one am delighted that the British are reminding themselves of their scientific heritage for this, their most ambitious space mission yet. It sets up high expectations, but that's what you need to carry something like this forward.
BTW, there are still those who claim that Viking discovered evidence of life, but this is a minority viewpoint.
Helium balloons want to be free.
The name of Darwin's ship (Beagle) was the first DM 1,000,000 question asked on Germany's version of 'Who wants to be a millionaire'.
;-)
BTW, the guy decided to take the 500,000 bucks
Join the Mars Society. Philip Dembo, the chairman, is conducting a drive to mobilize support. Make sure this project isn't canned like some others; governments can be fickle, and the funding might not be there tomorrow (just ask the folks at the supercollider). And when you leave, make sure you stop at the giftshop and buy something -- 5% of proceeds go towards helping conquer Mars.
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I hear that the landing site will be 10 meters by 10 meters square, or 30 feet by 30 feet if you're a NASA engineer.
segfaulteq@home.com
No offense, but the problem was that the numbers weren't converted over, therefore, it didn't matter what system of measurements were being used, all that mattered was that there was more then one.
If they had stuck to pure English units, they wouldn't have made the error. The error was that they assumed that the units they were working with were English units, its just as easy to make the other side of that mistake and assume all units are metric. Therefore, while there may be many good arguments for adopting the metric system, this isn't one of them.
Just my $.02
Or maybe they played one of those minesweeper games written in perl that placed in TPJ's obfuscation contest a while back... now there's a real game. Console mode. None of that pansy GUI business, no sir!
Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.
That's one small step for man, one giant leap for Snoopy and his Sopwith Camel.
Yeah, I think it would be pretty funny, if there was life on mars, and every 3 years the assholes from earth spend billions sending this probe, and the martians shoot it out of the air, the minute it shows up on their radar. Then they all sit around drinking beers and laughing at the stupid earthlings -Glenn
NASA uses metric consistently , but the contractor that built the polar lander used english units. So when NASA got data about the reentry engine burn from the contractor (IIRC Lockheed), it was in English units and NASA just took it for metric and hence a crash.
They've gone with a completely different approach to testing for life than the Viking landers, whose results were hard to interpret. (Some of the Viking results were what you'd expect if there were bacteria, and other results were what you'd expect if there weren't. See this Slashdot discussion.) It's going to test for traces of methane in the atmosphere, which would be a strong indicator of subterranean microbes. It's also going to analyze how much of the carbon in soil samples is in organic forms and how much is inorganic, and the isotope ratios of organic and inorganic carbon.
If the results are positive, it'll be one of the two or three greatest scientific discoveries of all time.
Find free books.
Couldn't find a link to it on The Onion's site, so here's a quote:
"Explorer 2, like its predecessor, had been headed for the sun, where it was to be the first spacecraft to land on a star. "We'd hoped to bring back and study sun rock," Toshikima said.
The straw ship had been equipped with a special reinforced wicker basket to hold the sun lava for its journey back to Earth. A straw-enforced robot arm was constructed to scoop the lava--which scientists say is as hot as the center of a nuclear holocaust--and place it in the basket.
The ship's debris is slated to be used as mulch."
Great stuff; I heartily reccomend both of their books.
--Psi
Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.
I think if we wanna survive as a species, statistically we're gonna wanna get off this planet before something fucks up ... all of our eggs are kinda in one basket right now :)
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Again it seems that we are seeing probes being sent to "less interesting places"...
:)...
Personly I think that the place may risk to be relatively disappointing. But that also depends how far it wiil be from Syrtis. Near Syrtis there are some interesting forms called "black sands" or "black spots". Craters seem to have some "plastic" morphology in general. A few dark currents seem to be spotted on the North, but that's more Syrtis. The farer from Syrtis the most desertic and unfeatured it looks. Sand dunes seem to rule there, so let's hope that Herbert was not having visions from Mars while writing his book
Curious. This place seems one of the less shot by MOC. At least on the present level of published pictures...
Does the smiley face come up if they win?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Now we know why NASA has been screwing things up lately! The map (linked above) is clearly an indication that NASA (and other space agencies) are using Windows. The problem: they play Minesweeper instead of the "Mission Control" game. *grin*
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
By the looks of it, they are at least planning out the landing well. (Even if they do make it out to look like a cheesy game) That is more than we can say for our NASA peolpe who foget conversions. Would this even be a problem for countries who use the metric system the majority of the time? Or do they still have lingering remnants of the "English" system?
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
The landing site for the ship was, in fact, determined by a game of minesweeper.
They're doing their part to make sure the sun never sets on the British Empire. Next year, I hear they plan to land a probe on the sun itself.
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;-)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Lets hope they do their conversions from metric correctly this time... I'd hate to see another space vehicle end up in a crater.
I think that basing a space mission on the biggest time wasting windows game could possibly beat that inches to centimeters thing......
There's really nothing particularly minesweeper-esque about it...
It's just your standard, everyday map, divided into a grid, and with X's to mark things. Nothing to intersting there.
Or am I missing something, and there's now a version of minesweeper that lets you draw shapes and mark mines anywhere, regardless of the grid?
Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.
My other sig is extremely clever...