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Top Ten Discoveries of the Mars Rovers
eldavojohn writes "Space.com brings us the top ten discoveries of the Martian rovers that landed there in 2004. They were expected to last three months but, as Slashdot has covered time and time again, they have lasted over three years. From minor discoveries about the formation of Mars to images of atmospheric phenomena, to final and definitive proof of a Mars with water, these two robots have definitely reserved themselves a place in the history books. Pending a dust storm, they may not even be done with their mission yet."
If credit is to be tossed around, anthropomorphizing devices such as these tends to ignore the 'real' people that harnessed imagination and creativity so that 'they' could scuttle around another world.
...don't answer that, thanks.
Why the childish urge to conjure up cute little clanking robots instead of simply patting a fellow human being on the back?
1. No LIFE!!! Stop wasting taxpayer money!!
Yes, lets stop pursuing scientific discoveries and focus our meager resources on invading countries under false pretenses as a proper imperial power should. Books and learning are for hippy surrender monkeys!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I assume that your view of archaeologists as well "Old crap from the past, stop wasting taxpayers' money". Or any other form of science that doesn't immidiately lead to direct rewards. It's our closest neighbor, in galactic distances this is like concluding that since there's noone standing on our doorstep and there's nothing interesting there, there's noone out there at all and so there's no point in leaving the house as it'd only be a waste of time and effort. Studying Mars is the second planet we get to study in any detail, any idea how much guesswork is made based on how things happened on earth? In most sciences you'd call a sample size of one "anecdotal", "spurious", "unreproducible" and "statistically insignificant". It's still the best we got, until we are able to study other planets. But I suppose that wouldn't be useful enough for you, it's science after all. Don't you have any desire for discovery or exploration?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
OK, first of all, almost all of the taxes you've paid for the last 10 years have already been spent several times over so we can Spread Democracy and Freedom.
Secondly, NASA engineers managed to create machines that were able to accurately and consistently navigate the surface of Mars safely and efficiently almost entirely on their own.
If anything, I wish NASA got more taxpayer money.
AC
Of course I want to discover. I am a scientist. But the public is unaware of the resources that NASA gets compared to other disciplines. As was pointed out above NSF Math and Physical Science get 135 million. That is tiny compared to just one of these NASA missions. Don't you think we should support string theory, the study of the big bang and number theory just a little more ?
The whole Apollo program was made in about 10 years, and in the 38 years since we landed on the moon all things electronic have improved with such incredible speed, going to Mars soon should be a piece of cake right? No. Is it because the GHz processors we have are too weak? No. It's because after that huge effort, and a few more missions until people lost interest, the program basicly shut down. Nobody was looking to invent technology to go even further, nobody was looking for rockets to go longer than geosynch orbit, nothing. We can wait another 50 years but that technology won't invent itself. I say the sooner the better, that way it will be cheaper in 50 years because it's been designed, tested and improved. While I don't think Bush is serious and is only using this as a distraction, I think we'd be able if we were willing.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Who modded parent 'troll'??? He/she is right: NASA didn't understand publicity too well when they acted like the shuttle was safe enough for a teacher and then they killed her. Now NASA is learning how to do publicity. And in the long run that may be the most important thing because good publicity means more funding.
Keep in mind that as part of NASA R&D a lot of useful technology gets developed along the way. NASA is very into developing better solar panels and high-tech materials, for example. It's very difficult to measure how much is spent on things that wind up having applications here on Earth compared to those that don't, though.
The other thing, though, is that private industry is somewhat better at funding things with obvious applications than it is at funding things whose primary goal is pure science, because it's a lot easier to get investors to part with their money when there's a chance that they'll get it back some day. So it makes some amount of sense for government to be spending money on pure science, since that's research that simply wouldn't get done otherwise, especially for large things like space exploration which are just out of the reach of the universities that do other pure research.
You know, saying "I'm not trolling" doesn't make it so. Of course your post was entirely insightful, and this is definitely the first time somebody's posted "why don't we spend this money on [foo] instead" to a space story on slashdot.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Your credibility is low.
Mars is not our nearest neighbour. Venus is, and by a fair way too.
A scientist should know this.
This business of "our nearest neighbour" has been spun by the pro-space
lobby to good effect. The fact is that probes sent to Venus are far cheaper.
For a start, they go Sun-ward and enjoy a good gravity-assist.
What? You don't like the weather on Venus? That doesn't justify the "nearest neighbour" myth.
'I AM a women'
uh huh
'I could probably solve more math and physics problems in an evening that you could in a month.'
Likely. Are you implying that there is some sort of association between the two?
Sorry but you aren't a female, you aren't a 'insert race here', you aren't a 'insert nationality here', you are an individual. You neither get to stand taller due to the achievements of nor spin the failures of other individuals simply because they happen to share a group designator with you.
The thing I personally find most amusing, is that the only valid use of gender as a designator is to classify sex objects. And yet, those who want to be identified first by their gender don't seem to want their sex used to identify them as sex objects notwithstanding the entire biological purpose of having genders and the natural reproductive instincts associated with them.
Iraq War: $1,300 billion
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
>The whole Apollo program was made in
>about 10 years, and in the 38 years
>since we landed on the moon all things
>electronic have improved with such
>incredible speed, going to Mars soon
>should be a piece of cake right? No. Is
>it because the GHz processors we have
>are too weak? No
A billion times more processor power has no effect because the PROCESSOR POWER IN 1969 was PLENTY ENOUGH. The hard job of landing men on the moon had nearly nothing to do with computers and faster computers don't solve any relevant problems. The hard problems to solve were structural design and propulsion, not algorithms. Propulsion technology- at least propulsion technology useful for manned lunar missions - hasn't advanced one iota since the mid-60's.
To the contrary, all that essentially infinite computer power has brought is C++ or other, more inappropriate languages and associated junk programming - THAT MAKE IT HARDER. In fact, I predict that the biggest issue on return to the moon and even return to capsule Earth-orbital missions will be the flight software - too much to test correctly and innumerable bugs caused by modern "computer science" approaches. Having 6k of RAM and implementing the firmware *on a loom* was sufficiently limiting to prevent the worst of the current bloatware approach to programming. Virtually every current space project of which I am aware has had massive problems with the flight software and database, and it's coincident with trying to use inappropriate programming techniques made possible by faster computers.
Brett
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Somebody with enough brain to not credit the tinfoil hat nonsense that NASA somehow overdesigns their craft and make performance claims only a fraction of that actually built.
You make a good point, but in the arena NASA plays in, namely the great grab for public funds, marketing is essential.
Do you work in IT? The decision in favor of a solution/team/product/company often comes down to marketing. Well, NASA is in the same boat.
Imagine yourself in a position to make a decision that affects mountains of taxpayer money, and therefore your reputation, and in turn your future employment prospects. You certainly don't have time to critically evaluate everything that comes your way. You too would most likely choose the thing that seemed the most well packaged, because all you can look at is the packaging.
So many people in IT don't realize the need for good marketing. I'll leave you with one last example: MSFT. Suspect engineering, aggressive marketing == monopoly. Maybe it's not right, but that's how it is.
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