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NASA Announces Next Mars Mission
Grant Henninger writes "Today, NASA announced their final selection for the Mars Scout 2013 mission: Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN. MAVEN will provide the first direct measurements ever taken to address key scientific questions about Mars's evolution by measuring characteristics of its atmospheric gases, upper atmosphere, solar wind, and ionosphere. The mission, estimated to cost $485M, is scheduled for launch in late 2013."
Hoyven MAVEN!
Wow, what a boring science mission.
I say we attack them instead and keep the planet for ourselves.
NASA's Mars Exploration Program seeks to characterize and understand Mars as a dynamic system, including its present and past environment, climate cycles, geology and biological potential
That means, How difficult is it to land troops?
Yes, but are they looking for oil?
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Can we keep the same units of measurement this time? (That was a Mars mission right?)
Hmm... MAVEN? Does that mean anything? People who write acronyms contain so much fail.
maven â"noun
an expert or connoisseur.
In other news NASA has just issued a press release stating that the proposed $485M mission is already over budget.
I mean, I may not know much about space exploration, although I find the topic fun and interesting, but as they are planning this mission, which in effect is the studying of Mars atmosphere and weather, why not kill 2 birds with 1 stone and study Mars' crust or at least, something more like a few hundred feet into the ground itself?
Whatever equipment they send, have a missile or something that can impact or dig into the soil, be launched from space directly onto Mars soil. The resulting hole that would be from could receive the visit from a drone, who could take samples and make various analyses. After all, the surface soil samples they've been doing, it's all nice and dandy, but the real story, I believe should be what's underneath it all.
That way, they get data from the air and they get a sample of what Mars is made of down below. We may end up finding more resources available to help with towards a real man space exploration, as there may be resources awaiting to be utilized.
Depending on cost, etc.., they may even be able to have key locations targetted for drilling and just have a drone in each location dropped.
Gives a better perspective, might see some variations in what is found, depending on location..
Try working in the DoD itself. You're presented with the full-retard breadth of bad acronyms on the daily. But when I try and be creative and come up with something like SADIST or SMEGMA, my boss just tells me to go back to my desk.
Have us engineering students, engineers and insane rocket enthusiasts/investors design a mission to mars using live animals to test as many technologies as possible before you even think of sending a human mission. We US engineers are either bored building endless varieties of consumer crap or worrying what are we will be asked to build in a war with Russia and Iran. I vote C, a moused mission to mars. Think of the merchandising!
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
...that a good 10% of scientific work goes into inventing catchy acronyms :o) My boss is particularly good at this. And he has to, in order to secure the maximum amount of funding for our research. The catchier the better.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
There was supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom.
MAVEN - the toilet paper!
MAVEN - the action figure!
MAVEN - the breakfast cereal!
MAVEN - the flame thrower! (the kids love this one)
Similar to the upcoming US election results
FTFA:
the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter [...] camera can show Martian landscape features as small as a kitchen table
Exactly how big is a kitchen table? Is it an official unit of measurement? While we're at it, how long is a piece of string?
No wonder the original Polar Lander crashed...
Did they let professor Frink name this one?
"Now I'd like to announce Nasa's new Mars spacecraft, the HOYVIN-Maven"
People who write acronyms contain so much fail.
Mais Oui, especially when they appeaR to be Overtly creating the Name to fit the acronymS.
Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.
Let's be really generous here and say you have the greenest car on earth and can get 50mpg at 70mph. That's 5 gallons of fuel, or 22 litres. That's already a respectable size for a suitcase. So if the most efficient car around running on hydrocarbon fuel can only just achieve your specifications, batteries haven't a prayer. I wish you luck with your research and development, but I don't think $458 million is going to achieve the order of magnitude improvement you seek.
Or a hydroxy generating system that can power a home generator?
Not sure what you mean by this, but if you mean what I think you mean then that's a perpetual motion machine. Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, then burning the gas to produce water again, can never give a net output of energy.
Or a solar panel that is cheap enough for the average home owner to install and power their entire home?
You may be surprised to learn that quite a lot of NASA's funding goes on photovoltaics research. Making them lighter and more efficient. They find it very useful for powering their spacecraft.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.