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Mars Rover Rolls And Turns
hcg50a writes "MSNBC reports that overnight, 'the golfcart-sized rover cut the final cord tying it to the landing platform that it came in on 10 days ago, then backed up about 10 inches (25 centimeters) and turned 45 degrees. These were the first maneuvers planned in preparation for having Spirit roll 10 feet (3 meters) down a ramp onto the Martian surface on Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.' The NASA Mars rover website has complete animations from numerous cameras of the 45-degree turn. Driver training was never this cool!"
Drivers ed was never this slow!
How unslashdotian :o)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I can just imagine the conversations at NASA:
"Hey, this gizmo thingy is pretty nifty."
"You shouldn't fiddle with that, its highly delica-"
"Dude, this thing has fourwheel drive! Can I go offroad? Please?"
"Damnit, you can't just wa-"
"Watch me do a barrel roll! Weeeee!!!"
~Tirinal
I thought at first the subject said: "Mars Rover Rolls And Burns"
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
... go to Mars for the untimate rock & roll experience? ;)
At least at NASA the backseat drivers are qualified enough to give criticism.
If NASA failed this driving test it would be huge waste of resources. How could they ever live it down? Imagine the headline:
"Rover drives off the side of ramp, breaks off two wheels, and a solar panel."
And the story afterward!
"Felix Milton man in charge of rover navigation watched in horror as the picture feed reached earth. "The rover wheel slipped off the side of the ramp due to some... er.. martian dust," Milton reported. All in all the rover took a five meter trip, and then reported fell 25 cm to the unforgiving martian ground. NASA spokesmen report the trip took 8 agonizing minutes to reach its conclusion. "
Ahh well I hope its fun for them, expensive remote control toy if you ask me. I hope we get solid answers for the questions this project was sent to investigate.
Geeze, and I thought my Grandma's driving was slow. Perhaps if the Rover was using a hands-free cell phone attachment it could concentrate on driving more....
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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Maybe if the Lunix community came up with an original GUI, it'd be more easily recognized.
I read this in a column on the internet:
"Kathy Sarvak of Burlington, Vt., points out that European Space Agency's "Beagle 2," named in honor of Charles Darwin's vessel, failed at Mars while NASA's "Spirit," with its quasi-religious name, succeeded. "God's sense of humor is a wonderful thing," she declares."
Personally, I am shocked and appalled that our NASA technicians are giving quasi-religious names to scientific equipment. This shows no faith in reason and deduction. It would not surprise me if the data from Spirit is cooked up by creationists in the Bush administration to shore up their own wacky beliefs.
I hope NASA's scientists use more common sense next time.
Hai,
This is Dr. Darkus Shin from mission control at JPL. It's true we been Debian fans and used that Operating system on every martian probe mission.
But recently due to an informative article from SCO ceo Mr. Darl McBride, we are influenced to try other operating systems.
Thus, there are two camps here on JPL, one the boy scouts camp running Apple's Operating System X and the other the Mars team running Gentoo GNU Linux.
Now, me I don't really know what the boys are doing up in their camp, we rarely hear much from them, but during late night we do hear a lot of celebrations and feasting. I do hope they would stop slaughtering the wild life.
And now since we are running Gentoo GNU Linux, the Debian way has been appricated (I'm sorry I'm dyslixc). The only sanatised way to do is is as follows (provided the enviornment varible JPL is not strange, in a quantum sense).
1. Make sure JPL is not strange.
2. Edit the kernel to make sure it knows what we are doing (thx to McBride for this).
3. Build the images from source by using
emerge mars-crap
Ok this would build it from source, it's optimized for the 8086 enviornment and should automatically launce Internet Explorer and show the pictures.
I hope you all build from source without downloading huge images. The source files are relatively small and use sophisticated imaging algorythems to guess the formations found on mars.
Dr. Darkus "Amaafui" Shin
Mission Control
--
"HI, my name is Darkus, if u r a lady who wants me, come click on the link to match.com, i'm waiting 4 u, i kiss u"
Spammers Using Mars Rover as Relay
"NASA engineers first became aware the issue when the images of the Martian landscape from the pancam started to resemble hot young girls"br>
"NASA promised to track down the people responsible. "Please send to us any spam you receive originating from the '@spirit.mars' address, so we can track down the offending spammers. Don't forget to include the pictures too,"
It's possible the martian terrain has been disturbed by images of the goatse man. Nasa has it plastered on the surface of the rover to deter thiefs and martian ghosts.
So disgusting, even dirt crawls away.
Pfft, I was doing this sort of stuff years ago on my BigTrak
If you had a glorified RC car that worked 40 million miles away, I'd be jealous.
The unofficial
That WOULD mean it really is "in a crater." So they were at least partly right.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Rover: Wirrrrrrr (crawls forawrd)
Martian Highway Patrol (MHP): Whoop Whoop! Pull over!
Rover: Wirrrr Click
MHP: You got a license for that thing?
Rover: Wirrrrrrrr Click Click Zoommm
MHP: Funny guy eh? (pulls ray-gun(tm))
Rover: !
ZAP!
"Hey, Phil! How long's the dorsal solar panel s'posed ta be?"
"10 feet, Bob."
"We ain't as'posed ta use feet nomore. What's that in meters?"
"Well, let's see. Darth Vader is 2 meters tall, and this is definitely bigger than him, but shorter than an Olympic swimming pool, which is fifty. 3 meters, Bob."
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.