Slashdot Mirror
Saturn Rings But No Spokes
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists continue to ponder why images of Saturn's rings today lack the 'spokes' or dark radial bands radiating outward and first observed on the Voyager flyby. The Boulder-based Cassini Image Team describes 5 visible moons, plans for the descent probe going into the Titan moon's hydrocarbon-rich atmosphere and the expected orbital entry around Saturn less than 4 months from now."
If only NASA would bring the success of this mission into the public spotlight as a way to raise awareness as to its more successful programs.
That's absolutely true. After what happened with the Columbia, NASA really needs to boost public support for their programs. People see the 2 shuttle disasters that have occured as being the bulk of what they accomplished, and that is just wrong.
And of course, I'm not saying what happened isn't tragic. But people dont understand that many astronauts understand that disaster is a possibility, and they're willing to take that chance in the pursuit of the Greater Understanding.
NASA really has to get the PR machine in motion
The post is not exactly a troll and makes sense enough to be moderated as interesting. However, nobody wants to see some idiot gaining karma points by mooching off of some other persons opinions/ideas. Shouldnt there be some mechanism whereby the post is modded up but the poster does not get the mod points? Or at least some reporting interface that will blacklist the poster for having copied the post verbatim...
Note, if the poster had given due credit to the original post, it probably would have been okay.
But isn't that the truth? Let's face it, manned exploration IS orders of magnitude more expensive than unmanned, doesn't provide much more benefit from a scientific viewpoint, as is infinitely more tragic when things go wrong. If we still want to do manned exploration because of the "cool factor", then so be it, but let's not lie to ourselves about the facts.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
It sort of seems to me like saying "unmanned exploration is really successful, but look at how many people we killed with stupid manned exploration, that could have easily been done unmanned".
Well, that's exactly the message many of us would like to get out. Using astronauts is hot stuff for the evening news but otherwise is rarely of much value. Even the "rescue missions" for things like the Hubble probably don't break even. The development and maintenance cost of the shuttles, space suits, manned safety environment, etc., has gotta be more than sending up full replacement systems.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
But the spokes were first observed with the CCDs on Voyager. Also, no astronomer actually looks through an eyepiece any more, its all CCDs or other detectors. All of the ground-based spoke observations (could you provide a source for such images?) are thus not going to be subject to the Percival Lowell wishful thinking effect.
It's more likely to be due, as other posters have suggested, to be due to variations in Saturn's magnetic field. It would seem that Cassini is already producing interesting science before it goes into Saturnian orbit.
Agreed.
I think that a well-trained geologist/astronaut could pull far more information from a short walk on mars than those rovers could their whole time on the surface. Besides being infinitely more maneuverable than any robot, living astronauts can devise new experiments and fix things when they go wrong. Anything a robot can do, an astronaut in a space suit can do BETTER by several orders of magnitude.
Now, when things go wrong, it is much less tragic to lose a robot than it is to lose a space crew. However, any crew embarking on such an expedition will be fully cognizant of the risks, and I am sure that even if the trip was a guaranteed one-way ticket to mars that qualified volunteers could still be found.
Also, no astronomer actually looks through an eyepiece any more, its all CCDs or other detectors.
True, the pros don't have much eyepiece time, but many amateurs still do, and these spokes still show up.
All of the ground-based spoke observations (could you provide a source for such images?) are thus not going to be subject to the Percival Lowell wishful thinking effect.
I cannot provide linkage at this time, but google on sci.astro.amateur, and check out some books in the library. I'm not saying this effect isn't real, I'm just playing the skeptic given the history of the Martian canali. Just because one ccd detector-software combo sees something, doesn't mean they all will or can.
I think that a well-trained geologist/astronaut could pull far more information from a short walk on mars than those rovers could their whole time on the surface.
But for the same price as one well-trained geologist/astronaut, you'd get a *hundred* rovers spread all over Mars. You must compare 1 with 100, not 1 with 1.
Well, I think we have to ask ourselves about the real purpose of the space program. The fact is that space science has few useful applications on Earth (despite the spinoffs which NASA keeps bragging about), and if science were our only goal, we'd be better off spending the money on other projects. Heck, even fusion reactors and particle accelerators would give us more bang for the buck.
No, I think that the real reason to send people into space is so people can be in space. Earth is starting to get too small for us, and there's always the risk of some global disaster, so people should think about colonizing the solar system (and, eventually, other systems). And while sending robots to Mars may teach us a bit about Mars, what we really need to know is how humans could live on Mars, and the simplest way to figure that out is to send a human.
Oh yeah, and in response to your sig:
The Problem with Instant Runoff Voting
Condorcet: A Better Election Method
All it takes is nukes and nerves.
Any astronaut who doesn't know it's dangerous to get in a machine older than the family car & take it to 17,500 mph is an idiot. They know the risks.