Curiosity Gearing Up for Drive to Next Study Location

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Curiosity Gearing Up for Drive to Next Study Location

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday September 13, 2012 @05:59PM from the warming-up-the-engines dept.

Curiosity has spent most of the past 5 weeks running instrument and system checks, but on Friday that is all scheduled to change. The plan is to "drive, drive, drive" until a suitable rock for the rover's first robotic "hands-on" analysis is found, says mission manager Jennifer Trosper. The rover will head to a location about 1,300 feet away labeled "Glenelg," where three different types of rock intersect.

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Ah, Ye Olden Times. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 18:04 · Score: 5, Funny

The rover will head to a location about 1,300 feet away...
That be 12/36ths of a cubit, multiplied by four and 1/4 rods, then minus sixteen and 1/8th hogsheads.
1. Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. by Brett+Buck · 2012-09-13 18:31 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  When you put a rover on Mars, you can pick whatever units you want.
2. Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. by isorox · 2012-09-13 18:50 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  When you put a rover on Mars, you can pick whatever units you want.
  That worked out so well for the Mars Climate Orbiter
3. Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 18:52 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  When you write a slashdot summary about an organization that put a rover on Mars, you can pick whatever units you want.
  FTFY. The original press release from NASA contained the both the metric units and the imperial ones (Didn't specify the subset but I am going to assume British feet.)
  The article linked in the summary only presents the distance in metric units. The summary is either not a summary of the article or the one who wrote the summary took the liberty to convert the liberty to convert the units with some rounding.
4. Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. by wonkey_monkey · 2012-09-13 19:18 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  When are American's going to grow up?
  When you stop abusing the apostrophe.
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
5. Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. by Rik+Rohl · 2012-09-13 20:08 · Score: 2
  
  NASA has. They chose metric.
6. Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. by NotSanguine · 2012-09-13 20:36 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  What is that in a civilized unit of measure?
  When are American's going to grow up?
  It's Americans, not American's and that's a very good question.
  Also, 1m=3.275ft, so 1300 feet = 396.95m or 1.97 furlongs.
  
  --
  No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
7. Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. by felipekk · 2012-09-13 22:34 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I know it's a different one, but still oblig:
  http://xkcd.com/695/
8. Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. by Teancum · 2012-09-13 23:54 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  If you are going to do conversions, make sure you include proper rounding to significant digits and avoid false precision.
  In other words: 1300 feet = 400 m = 2 furlongs.
  Well, those are approximate conversions, but it is an approximate distance as well. This is something I think most "science reporting" does a horrible job of dealing with as well.
  As for cubits, those were about 21 inches or about 52 centimeters, which would put the distance at about 800 cubits or about 80 rods. A hoghead is a unit of volume, which isn't applicable.
9. Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. by SternisheFan · 2012-09-14 01:31 · Score: 2
  
  It's a robot, does it drive an automatic or a manual transmission? If it's an American made robot I doubt it's programmed to operate a clutch.
  Hey, I'm an American, functioning robot who learned early on in my programming to work a clutch. Unfortunately, Curiosity's steering wheel isn't left side mounted. ;-(
10. Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. by PPalmgren · 2012-09-14 01:56 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I love the irony of it. I was having a discussion with a buddy from Montreal and he was railing on the US for not being metric. I was like....bro....you're the only province on the continent that speaks French. I'll spend trillions converting the US to metric if you spend trillions forcing everyone to learn the dominant language, English.
  The EU is where most of the imperial unit bitterness comes from, and it has 23 official languages. Oh sweet irony.
11. Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. by tehcyder · 2012-09-14 02:57 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  What is that in a civilized unit of measure?
  When are American's going to grow up?
  A foot is an arbitrary unit of measurement like a metre. What's the difference? Why is one more civilized or grown up than the other?
  
  --
  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
12. Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. by tehcyder · 2012-09-14 03:06 · Score: 2
  
  While 85% of the world drives on the left
  There must be a lot of very drunk or highly incompetent drivers in the rest of the world then.
  
  It's in Britain that we drive on the left.
  
  --
  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
13. Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-14 05:11 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Would that be the international foot or the survey foot? Indian or English survey foot? And would it be pre- or post-1959 when the foot was standardized world-wide? Try the same with gallons. Will that be US or Imperial, liquid or dry? For miles, would that be statute miles, nautical miles, US statute miles, UK statute miles, US survey miles (derived from the afore-mentioned survey foot and similar yard)... and it just gets sillier from there. Wait, these differences don't matter? But oh, they do, if you're shipping stuff internationally and expect to get paid properly, or if you're buying real estate and want to make sure that your land survey is correct.
  To twist a phrase, the nice thing about Imperial measures is that there are so fricking many to choose from. It's so bad that the "standard" solution these days for Imperial measures is to define *all* of them in terms of the metric equivalents.
  Thanks, but I'll take the system with *one* arbitrary unit established rather than half a dozen different ones that are now all based on the metric system anyway.
14. Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. by SecurityTheatre · 2012-09-14 06:04 · Score: 2
  
  To be fair, there are really only two SI units from which the rest can be derived.
  For example, a kilogram can be defined as the weight of 100 cubic mL of pure distilled water at STP.
  A gram is also defined by the weight of one mole of an element (inverse to its atomic weight).
  A joule is defined by the energy required to apply a force of one newton for one metre. The list goes on.
  A calorie (SI) is defined by the energy required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree celsius.
  A hectare is 10,000 sq meters
  The whole point of SI units is that you can define two units (it doesn't matter which), and obtain all the rest from those two. (You also have to define the size of one degree celsius/kelvin, but kelvin is actually based at absolute zero, so it requires no other definition)
  The imperial metrics are not often related to each other at all, so it's absolutely insane to try to use them in science, since converting between major units is so damn hard. How many feet in a mile? 5280. How much does water weigh? 8.345404 pounds per gallon, or 62.42796 pounds per cubic foot. A gallon is 0.133681 cubic feet, or 231 cubic inches. An acre is 45560 sq ft. Don't even start trying to define BTU (instead of joule). Its one of the few that's well defined (in terms of heating water), but then there are no international standards, so countries that use BTU all have slightly different definitions of it. The US, UK, India all have measures that differ by about 5%. Neat!
  Yucko!
Lazy scientists by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 19:19 · Score: 3, Funny

Taking a car when they could have just walked 400 meters. Don't they think of the environment?
what hands? by FranTaylor · 2012-09-13 20:25 · Score: 3, Funny

I don't see hands on the ends of those robot arms. I don't know what they are talking about.
The robot devil had to sign a deal with Fry to get hands.
Curiosity landing in HD and sound. by SternisheFan · 2012-09-13 22:38 · Score: 4, Interesting

I submitted this for a story, may be redundant. Here's a link to the landing in enhanced 1080 hd video with sound effects added in. http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/curiosity-landing-video-gets-sound-visuals-enhanced-to-1080p-20120914/
Glenelg? by aglider · 2012-09-13 23:23 · Score: 3, Funny

Curiosity will certainly end up in a palindrome loop!

--
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Crushing versus that poking thing. by khallow · 2012-09-13 23:48 · Score: 2

This is the poking robot. Do not listen to the crushing robot. He is defective. Crushing is the answer!
1. Re:Crushing versus that poking thing. by dissy · 2012-09-14 01:07 · Score: 2
  
  This is the poking robot. Do not listen to the crushing robot. He is defective. Crushing is the answer!
  Do you mean to say that Curiosity has pushed grandma to the bottom of the stairs?
Re:The difference between traveling on Curiosity by Chris+Burke · 2012-09-14 03:13 · Score: 2

If Curiosity encountered a prostate on Mars, I'm sure it'd want to investigate it with its laser, and possibly drill.

--

The enemies of Democracy are