Five Year Retrospective: Mars Pathfinder

An anonymous reader writes "Five years ago today, on September 27, 1997, NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory began to lose communication with the Mars Pathfinder and ended its highly successful mission. The interview with Matt Golombek, Project Scientist, highlights Mars' warm and wet past. The still remarkable landing sequence, with first signal only 3 minutes after touchdown, seemed a rare combination of luck (bounced 16 times and landed on its base petal). Not mentioned, it cost less than the making of even a medium-sized Hollywood movie." NASA is getting ready to publish their future plans for deep-space missions.

Comments

funding possibility

[passion]

Well, if it cost less than a Hollywood picture, why not push it a little further? Seriously, NASA could pull my dollars directly if they were to include an IMAX camera setup on their future space missions, then put together a work of art to display in the theater... that's how they can privatize and overcome congressional budget limitations.

New Unit of Project Cost Measure?

[Speare]

It's interesting to consider that the Pathfinder mission cost less than a "medium sized Hollywood movie" project, but is that really a valuable measure?

I remember the same sort of comparison made about the first Jurassic Park movie, where more money went into that one movie than in all dinosaur archaeology spending... ever.

But what does that tell us? Scientists are more thrifty than Hollywood? Hollywood is the definition of excess... "larger than life" has been its motto since day one. Or maybe that the market for movies is wider than the market for scientific progress? Well, science is funded by government and philanthropy, while movie-making is funded by Joe Sixpack and his family of teenagers who frankly don't give a shit about science, except for the D- that Becky Sixpack got last semester.

Why not find suitable comparisons between opposites. To recycle an old joke, Progress versus Congress? How much money went into the last election cycle? How much money went into purchasing the DMCA which further entrenches the Hollywood regime?

Will the Gulf War II cost more money than Rambo II or Superman II or Star Wars Episode 2? Will the special effects (either in terms of the decisively televised explosions or the new cinematic masterpieces unfolding in the election-year stump speeches)?

uh, not quite

[tunabomber]

Not mentioned, it cost less than the making of even a medium-sized Hollywood movie.

That's strange- I read that the total mission cost $265 million - more than Titanic cost to make. Still, at $1 a citizen, I think it was worth it.