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Fly Over Mars... in a Robotic Balloon
Roland Piquepaille writes "A Californian company, Global Aerospace Corporation (GAR), is developing remote-controlled balloons for the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). BBC News Online reports that their goal is to send these balloons carrying robots and cameras to explore Mars skies. But it's not for a near term future. The robotic StratoSail will have a stabilizing wing suspended several miles below it. It will be able to stay above Mars for months. It will send robotic probes to monitor the surface and minilabs to carry out experiments. This overview contains more details, references and images about the StratoSail."
...until the Martians bring out their peashooters.
The Human Cow - bringing you scrumtrelescence since 1995
Holy early-nineties webdesign, Batman!
Roses are red
Violets are blue
On Soviet Mars
Balloons fly you
Current karma: Terrible (due to mods without a sense of humor)
But we will be able to set up a giant balloon with a big-ass wing suspended by miles of cable flying over the Martian surface.
Color me skeptical.
I have been pwned because my
I can just see all those sufering martian citezens crying about the UFOs overhead while the neighbors who mised the "baloon" ofer to have them commited.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
...hire Richard Branson to operate the balloon!
Nah, this is nothing new. My three year old has tried to send every ballon he has got is hands on straight to Mars. We have started tying little loops in the string for his wrists to stop this.
If they can get a ballon that high, I say go for it.
Magic Eight Ball: Outlook not so good., Hmmm, how about Excel and Word?
99 red ballons floating in the summer sky
Panic bells, it's red alert
There's something here from somewhere else
They war machine springs of life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky
As 99 red ballons go by.
Oh well, no more 80's music...
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
... approaching Pavonis Mons by balloon.
An object crashed into the dunes here on Mars from the sky, which among increasing reports of so-called 'alien' activity, has escalated the public's fear of an invasion.
The Martian government continues to deny any knowledge of beings from the Blue planet, and claims the object was just a weather balloon, and nothing to worry about.
"I only speak the truth"
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I guess The 5th Dimension was onto something here. Remember how their song went?
Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon
We could float among the stars together, you and I
All they need to do is paint it red and they've got all of the best balloon songs covered.
So does this explain Marvin Martians voice? He's been sucking on a ballon?
Advertiser's finally start slowing down on the internet, and now they move on to another planet.
I can just see the good old Whitmans and Goodyear blimps floating over the red planet.
They'd have to be bigger of course, so observers could see the blue object floating around Mars from a telescope on Earth.
VENI, VIDI, VICI, DIXI
Am I the only one who is reminded of United Aerospace Corporation (UAC)? You know, from Doom?
I'm afraid those balloons will end up taking pictures of cacodemons or something...
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
We humans think we are so clever don't we? We've had (allegedly) men on the moon, and now we are remotely exploring Mars, but really there is something more sinister going on right under our noses.
You see, in the future, the question may be asked "what race of beings first made it to Mars?" and the answer? Machines.
You know the way dolphins triain people to feed them fish so they don't have to bother with all that pesky hunting? Well it looks to me suspiciously like the machines may be planning to colonize Mars first by tricking us into financing their operations. They already have made it there in the past, and in fact right now they have two mobile individuals on the surface that are imagining god knows what fate for human kind. On earth, they have managed to get a model T800 Terminator into a strong political position, which could end up making President.
Ultimately, ironically, the epitaph of the human race may be "Hasta la vista, baby."
.. the Martian Govt can explain away the crash of an alien craft on their planet as a wrecked balloon and actually be right.
Just look at SCO's lawsuits.
Majority Of Americans Thought We Already Had A Moon Base
WASHINGTON, DC--A NASA poll conducted to gauge support for President Bush's space-exploration initiative revealed that a depressing 57 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. already has a research base on the moon. "We put that international space-station thing up there in the '60s," phone-poll respondent Randy Snow said. "It might be on Mars, but I think it's the moon--wherever they have the golf course that President Kennedy played on. Remember, the Cubans tried to take it over?" NASA officials said they hope someday to make Americans' perception a reality.
Thanks The Onion
Did anybody else notice that the site design was eerily similar to that of Grocklaw? I wonder whose design they stole for the balloon? I wonder if they know about . . . (clutches tinfoil hat more tightly).