Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mars and the History of Antacids

Posted by michael on from the fizz-fizz dept.

An anonymous reader writes "NASA's retrospective today on the 1976 Mars Viking mission describes the first probe to orbit another planet, and the first biology experiments based on soil sampling. Program managers maintained a dynamic 'worry list', which included a 1970's computer that opened like a wireframe book. The all-important biology experiments could not be tested prior to launch, then lightning struck the probe components (at Kennedy's Explosive Safe Area Building)."

9 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Not very lucky by tuluvas · · Score: 0, Funny

    That is not very lucky. I wonder what the chances of that happening are! can't be very big chances. I wonder though if they where being literal when they said lighting struck it?

  2. Why the Viking mission was accepted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    NASA managers found a way to convince the goverment to fund this mission: they told Bush that the martians are developing weapons of mass destruction. They have reliable intelligence: a complete report from secret agent Herbert G. Wells.

  3. Hot Nasa engineer by mad44 · · Score: 2, Funny

    http://www.astrobio.net/articles/images/computer_t est.jpg

  4. Check out the babe testing that computer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Thankfully, hairdos miniaturized along with the computers.

  5. That's what you think! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
    Meanwhile all the hair that fell into the computer, after being struck by lightning, and the martian conditions, has grown and bred.

    Beware the Giant Hairballs of Mars!

  6. "book" computer by RenaissanceGeek · · Score: 2, Funny

    Sort of gives a whole new meaning to the term "memory pages" now doesn't it?

    Especially as those "hair thin wires" are being threaded through the donut-shaped magnetic cores that made up the computer's RAM. (one donut per bit! Ain't core-memory fun?)

    Progress is the process of making yesterday's innovations obsolete.?

    --
    What is the difference between a small revolutionary change and a large evolutionary change?
  7. Mating and the Mars-bound hardware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    The article ends with this juicy bit of information:
    Viking orbiter l, and Viking lander capsule 1 were mated for the first time on 8 March.

    Why do they leave us in the dark? Were they able to get the orbiter and lander to sucessfully mate in captivity? Did they have twins? Where are they now?
  8. Pages of Memory! by vtechpilot · · Score: 2, Funny

    Its that very contrution technique shown in those pictures why memory is sometimes refered to as 'pages'.

    --
    Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
  9. Aha! by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe the lighning strike is the reason that the data about life were inconclusive. Either there is life but Voyager decided to hide it from us, or Voyager was detecting its own newly alive self. I learned about this stuff from a documentary movie called "Short Circuit."

    --
    This space available.