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NASA Plans On Bringing Back Martian Rocks
FortKnox writes: "In this Y! article, NASA is planning on sending a robotic mission to Mars in an attempt to bring back Martian stuff (rocks, soil, etc...). Looks like its a tough mission to plan for; they are calling it 'Apollo without the astronauts.'" I would like to go to Mars in person, but if they're spending my money already, I'd like them to please use robots for a while.
A rock will make the same size of crater as an expensive spacecraft. They should see some huge cost savings with this mission plan. Just use the metric rocks.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
We have problems on our own planet with overpopulation, energy, food production, pollution, resistant microbes and militant groups and these guys want to bring back rocks from Mars? Open your damn eyes. I'll personally send them a box 'o rocks. Just give me the address.
Let's stop letting NASA ride the "if it weren't for the space program you wouldn't have all this neat technology" horse and spend our collective efforts on something useful.
What a bunch of really bright nitwits. Truly amazing. Incredible, in fact. Sheesh.
I say we send criminals into space, and see if they blow up. Theorecitally, because our bodies are accustomed to 14-odd lbs of pressure, put into space, where there's no air pressure, would cause them to blow up.
I don't believe it though.
Maybe if they catch Bin Laden, they could try it on him.
What can we do by inspecting the rocks in person we can't do remotely? We should be able to do everything except touch it.
Well, for one thing, you can put the damn things next to the moon rocks in the museum. Then, folks and their annoying little brat kids will flock from all over the world to bust a gander, and while they're there, you can shove all sorts of fascinating propoganda in their face.
And then, like others have said, there's the fact that you can't fit an entire laboratory on a mars lander that will likely be built so light, they won't be able to build a model as light as the real thing.
I wonder what kind of processors they'll use on this lander, whether they'll be in-house specialties, military components, or products otherwise available on the market.
The other reason for a mission like this is development of new technologies and sciences. Imagine if 20 years from now, NASA will send up unmanned ships containing robots of various types that will land on the solid planets or moons in our solar system, perform experiments on site, collect materials and come back. When that becomes possible, imagine the effect on technology we use here on Earth. (I mean, Mafiasoft Windoze 2020 will probably take up 84 exabytes of disk space by then, and there won't even be a desktop--all your content will be served by Mafiasoft's servers, after authenticating through DRM-2020 that you're actually allowed to use Windoze, and all operations will be carried out by talking directly to the talking paperclip. If you don't want to talk, body language, hand and face gestures will be recognized by the paperclip, and it will usually perform the wrong operation, such as deleting your dissertation when you actually wanted to get the latest stock quotes or some other typical Mafiasoft result. Anyway... enough about that.)