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Mars Rover Ready for Risky Descent into Crater
Riding with Robots writes "After months of scoping out the terrain, the robotic geologist Opportunity is ready to drive down into Victoria Crater on the Meridiani Plains of Mars. Mission managers acknowledge the hardy rover may never come back out, but say they think the potential for discovery is worth it. 'The rover has operated more than 12 times longer than its originally intended 90 days. The scientific allure is the chance to examine and investigate the compositions and textures of exposed materials in the crater's depths for clues about ancient, wet environments. As the rover travels farther down the slope, it will be able to examine increasingly older rocks in the exposed walls of the crater. '"
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/video/movie s/opportunity/VictoriaDigitalStory.mov
JPL produced Video of Project Manager John Callas discussing the entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_crater if there is water ice underneath MArs' surface or even temporarily exposed ice, this is the spot. what ever created the crater whether a deorbited moon, asteroid or comet likely left water behind after the impact. so even if the rover doesnt come out again it will be well wortth the sacrifice.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
On the other hand, Victoria crater is pretty big (about a kilometer across), and could take many months to explore. The next closest crater is 25km away. In 3 years, Opportunity has travelled less than 11 km.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
Physical impacts have been seen on the planets. For example in 1994 there was a
comet that hit Jupiter. A little closer to home, the moon is regularly hit by objects. So yes there is a reasonable basis for thinking that planets get hit by hard objects.
I submit that the mars meteorite would probably be a better line of argument to use for your hypothesis.
The talus slopes that it has to traverse to get back out are covered with the little hematite 'blueberries.' Its wheels will just slip and slide. It's like driving on ball bearings. You can check in but you can't check out.
Actually aren't most of our space launch vehicles essentially modified ICBMs? I mean, isn't that true of most space launch vehicles? Von Braun and all that?
I think the general idea, as discussed in documents like this one, is that the primary design goal with ICBMs was maximizing the ratio between payload weight and rocket weight/size. This is great for ICBMs, where you want to cram missiles into tiny places, but not so good for space launches, where you should ideally be maximizing the payload/cost ratio. However, since most modern rockets are direct descendants of ICBMs, the original design constraints are still present in their current design, and are arguably embedded in the rocket engineering culture.
Most people say that the solution is then to pursue things like space elevators and scramjets, but groups like SpaceX are trying to show that low-cost rockets can still be developed if one designs them from the beginning to maximize the payload/cost ratio.
"Rather than ridiculing the EU Theorists, people should put serious effort into debunking them if they feel that they are wrong because what they are saying is very important"
It's actually pretty hard to debunk these claims without ridiculing them, because they are so poorly informed. You want "serious debunking"? Okay, I'll try.
Just as an example, the article about the "blueberries" doesn't make any sense, because it is founded on the mistaken impression that geologists think concretions form as isolated rocks on the sea floor that roll around for a while and then get incorporated into sediments. It's bizarre nonsense that even a casual glance at the literature (or a wikipedia page) would reveal. It reads like something out of the 19th century. Everything about concretions is inconsistent with such a scenario. For example, many concretions have sedimentary layers (bedding or laminations) that pass right through the concretion. Some of the "blueberries" also show hints of laminations on their surface, and they don't show the features typical of separate rocks (clasts) that are deposited.
Concretions are thought to form after deposition of the sediments by minerals being precipitated in the tiny spaces between the sediment grains, cementing the grains together as the minerals precipitate. It is usually fairly easy to tell if a particular structure formed separately and was incorporated into the sediment versus forming post-depositionally, and the "blueberries" are pretty clearly post-depositional.
Sometimes the growth of the precipitating minerals also causes expansion of the spaces, causing the concretion to displace surrounding sediments outward. This can create spaces within the interior of a concretion if the cementation and expansion is happening mostly on the outer surface (imagine the outer shell expanding in volume), resulting in some types of geodes (some types, because other geodes have nothing to do with concretion formation, and form by infilling of pre-existing cavities, such as bubbles (vesicles) in lava flows, but I digress...).
There is a fair amount of variation to the way concretions form, but there are probably hundreds of papers about them, including some good papers on the "Moqui marbles" that have been compared to the Martian "blueberries". There are some alternative interpretations for the "blueberries" (e.g., as condensate from impacts), but I don't think these are consistent with the bedding surrounding the structures, and they are quite different from anything "electrical".
Anyway, if "Electric Universe Theorists" can't even keep the very basics of the conventional theories straight, why should people take anything the "Electric Universe" people say seriously? And I don't know what is so "alarming" about supposed electrical effects -- the rovers seem to be driving around just fine without getting zapped, and they've got exposed electrical connections on their surfaces (i.e. the solar panels, as can be seen in the pictures).
>Come on, who can name a single astronaut since they ended Apollo?
You really shouldn't put a challenge like this on Slashdot. Wrong audience.
Robert Crippen and John Young - flew the first space shuttle flight, though I believe John Young also flew on both Apollo and Gemini, not sure about Crippen.
Sally Ride - first American woman in space.
Judy Resnick - Hometown (Akron, Ohio) woman killed on Challenger.
Crista McAuliffe - New Hampshire schoolteacher also killed on Challenger.
Shannon Lucid - Spent a looooong time on either Mir or ISS.
"Pinky" Nelson - Prominent role in fixing a satellite, I believe the Solar Max.
Then without knowing the names, we have the Hawaiian astronaut who died on Challenger, and had an Enterprise-D (fictional) shuttle (Okuzu?) named after him. There's also diaper-woman who recently made the news.
I know it's not a very long list, but you did say, "one".
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.