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Strange Globs Could Signal Water On Mars
Joshua.Niland writes "Strange globs seen on the landing strut of the Phoenix Mars lander could be the first proof that modern Mars hosts liquid water. Images from the robotic craft show what appear to be liquid droplets growing, merging, and dripping on the lander's leg over the course of a Martian month. Just when is NASA going to fix that leaking roof on the backlot?"
Oh the precious tax dollars!
You do realize that scientists have a higher burden of proof, right? They aren't going to say it's water until they analyze it and can confirm with certainty what it is.
Damn right it's my tax dollars at work, and millions of us approve of it.
The rovers are a "stupid" "big fuck up"?
Now I've heard it all.
You'd think any lander we send up there looking for water would have the ability to analyze any liquid droplets growing, merging, and dripping on the lander's leg over the course of a Martian month.
Another example of why the "why send humans, robots can do everything just as well" idea is bogus. If that was an astronaut up there this would be resolved in a minute, not a month.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Dear ___funding agency____, Is there surface water on Mars? We need to send another mission to Mars. It should cost less than the amount of money GM asked for bailout during this funding period to study this question, and 2 five-year funding periods to really find out. Please send money. JPL/NASA
Saying that "martians created humans" only takes the "why do we exist?" question and changes it to "why do martians exist?".
You didn't really answer anything, the whole "why does life exists" question still remains.
Replace "martians" with "God" and try again.
Dear JPL. While we are thrilled about your discovery, Mars isn't going anywhere. We are trying to save the economy and lesten the impact of this economic down turn so that we can spend even more money on you guys in the future. Spending 10 billion on machinists creates more jobs than spending 10 billion on rocket scientists. Hope you understand.
Funding Agency.
Dear _Funding Agency_,
We here at JPL understand your position. Since you feel that the space program has no benefits worth funding, we'll be sending over a large fleet of trucks to collect all your computers and other technology made possible by research connected with said space program.
We understand your need to keep operating however, and in the spirit of mutual understanding you've shown us, we will be sending you Univac for your future computational needs. Please have a very large building with a large electrical power system and a team of vacuum-tube replacement technicians ready.
Best of luck,
JPL
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
So this is supposedly water, or some other liquid, that's forming on exposed metal on a generally windy planet, and we're seeing photos over a 36 day period. Then why is it that there are quite a few persistent blobs that stay in the same place with basically the same shape over that period, while new ones form? Have any of you ever seen water droplets on your car retain their position and shape over 36 hours, much less 36 days? Isn't Mars generally pretty windy? Shouldn't there be much more rearrangement of blobs between these photos if we were looking at something like rain or condensation? If you showed me a picture series like that and said was a picture of a plant on Earth, I'd look at the spreading blobs and immediately tell you it was showing a spreading infestation of scale bugs (or some mealybug relative perhaps). Not saying this is evidence of life on Mars, but I'm interested to hear an explanation of how exposed liquid droplets on a metal surface outdoors can be persistent for that long, while more and more of them appear as time goes on.
Just FYI, NASA _is_ the funding agency.
Below is a marginal summary of the process. My colleagues will no doubt correct me where needed. For the record, IAAPS (I am a planetary scientist). It's a terrible system, but it's better than any of the alternatives.
Congress gives NASA some amount of money each year (~0.6% of the total budget). The bulk of this goes to the shuttle and space station programs, but a significant fraction is leftover for science and mission operations. This is portioned out to the various programs (Outer Planets Research, Planetary Geology and Geophysics, Mars Fundamental Research, etc.).
Scientists at their various institutions (including JPL) write grant proposals to one of the NASA programs to fund their research and spacecraft missions. Yes, JPL is a NASA center. Yes, this means that NASA employees still have to write to NASA asking for funding.
Each program convenes a panel of scientists (who have not submitted proposals to that program that year) to evaluate the proposals. In order to avoid conflicts of interest, panel members recuse themselves from discussion of any proposals by members of his/her institution. The NASA program manager selects which proposals to fund based on the panel's evaluations.