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Mars Rover Reaches Victoria Crater
gevmage writes, "CNN reports that the 'Opportunity' rover on Mars has reached the Victoria crater. The rovers Spirit and Opportunity arrived on Mars three years ago with planned mission lifetime of 90 days. The rover Spirit is wounded, having only 5 of 6 wheels functioning, and so it's moving quite slowly. However, Opportunity is still going strong and has been trucking towards the massive crater Victoria for almost the past year. Scientists have been hoping that Opportunity would get there so they can have a look at geologically older areas — and it's finally made it!" See the NASA press release for links to photos of the Victoria crater.
Space really is the final frontier. News stories like this never cease to brighten up my day, and give me hope for the future. Not to sound too corny, but do others find this is true?
The shuttle program may have been a mess but the rovers are one of the greatest accomplishments in space exploration to date and they just keep going. I'm guessing at least one of the rovers will still be going two years from now. There may have been failures along the way but in Mars research NASA has done a stunning job. Most other countries haven't had much luck getting probes to orbit Mars but NASA has had many successes. I'd love to see the shuttle program scrapped but I'm still a massive NASA fan. I would love to see probe go to some of the more interesting sites on Mars though. The poles and such. They would need a self contained power source though. Nowhere near enough light for solar.
Just out of curiosity--by what standards exactly, is China "making the US look pretty bad" in space tech?
They've managed--using Russian derivative technology--to put one man into space. Nothing shoddy, true, however the US and Russia each, with completely new technologies, doing something never done before, put people into space over 45 years ago. We put men on the moon about 35 years ago.
I'm all in favor of furthering space exploration, and China is a very welcome addition to the frame (I hope their involvement makes us go to the moon again frankly). Saying that they make NASA look bad though is ludicrous and ill-informed.
Based on NASA's 2007 budget request, we could fund it for more than 100 years on what we've spent on the war in Iraq so far. We could fund it for 260 years with the money we've spent on the Defense Department in 2006. We could fund it for almost 300 years with the money Bush gave back in tax cuts for the richest 1%. The amount of money the Medicare Drug Plan is projected to cost over the next 10 years could fund NASA for 560 years.
NASA is not the first place you should be looking for answers to the government's budget problems.
Yeah. Things like radar, sonar, high performance jet engines, compact wireless telegraphy, nuclear power and computers would all have been invented so much quicker if there hadn't been wars to get in the way.
The actions of a few "outcast individuals" do not erase great accomplishments that we achieve. At the same time, great accomplishments don't erase all of the truly vile shit that's going on out there. I'm not just talking about one single shooting, or even our destruction of the environment, or global violence. Those are all just microcosms of the bigger picture. It's fun and easy to always look at and celebrate the good stuff, but some of us don't want to do that at the expense of ignoring things that need to be fixed. And also, all it takes is a few of "the worst we have to offer" to fuck things up for the rest of us.
I think you missed my point, or misread my post. I was rebuffing the parent's belief that wars (or at least military spending) got in the way of science.
Have you noticed that the countries with socialized medicine and minimal military are not in space, or they largely piggy back on the former?
Have you noticed a rather large launch complex in South America, and space probes orbiting the Moon, Venus, and Mars?
Have you even glanced at the ESA's upcoming mision roster?
You'll have to to better than that if you want to troll around here.
Minimal "professional" army, socialized medicine, and still goign strong on rocket science.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Arianne 5 is one of the best launch vehicles in the known universe. For a change France is concentrating on practicalies - comms systems, observation and weather satellites, interplanetary studies etc. ESA have had some fantastic programmes recently. Whinching over-evolved chimps into space on the back of ICBM as some kind of vanity exercise (a la China etc) is not where it is at.
My blood just boils when people make these ascertions without giving them a second thought. They have bought in the popular wisdom spread mostly in countries in which, oh surprise, the economy is highly dependent in selling death machines.
If you think that science in Iraq, Sudan, Palestine or Afghanistan is going to be advanced at all thanks to the ongoing wars there, I venture with confidence that you are an idiot.
The countries in which some scientific advancement is gained during conflicts do so because they already have a research infrastructure in place. THis research infrastructure would produce useful science no matter what, the tax in human misery is an unnecessary price to pay and it is frankly disgraceful that there are pople thinking in those terms.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
To say that the rewards are great for the losers shows such an abismal ignorence that I don't know where to start.
But lets start somewhere.
Germany was the second country with more people killed after the USSR, this without accounting for the people killed in the demented genocide that took place there. Entire towns like Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig were literally removed from the face of earth, and ever since then Germans, most of who by now had nothing to do with the war, have to deal with a national anguish that is difficult to appreciate unless you have been there (which let me venture, you haven't).
As for Japan they had to endure two atomic bombs. I don't in which demented univers that may be compensated by economic prsperity a few years down the road. Not in mine surely.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.