Relying on a single computer that is a few hundred million miles away is, should I dare say? Retarded..
We at NASA are attempting to minimize the amount of retarded engineering we do, but it is a long road, and we are making progress. A report from 1990 showed that as much as 30% of engineering work was severely Retarded, with a whopping 15.1% considered Cretinous, and approximately 3.6% Id10t1c. Since then, we have cut this figures in HALF. 2002 figures showed only 16.8% Retarded work, 6% Cretinous, and Id10t1c lowered below 1%.
We can't do this alone, and we appreciate the insight of posters such as "codepunk" pointing this out to us. As you know, we are very busy, and often forget about things like redundancy and failure cases. Thank you for bringing this retarded decision to our attention. May we be so kind as to extend a job offer to you in our Retardation Quality Asurance department, where I am sure you will make an excellent Retardation Analyst.
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You can adjust the modifiers for all adjectives. The default is 0 (which is +1 for positives and -1 for negatives), but you can, e.g., make Funny == -4.
Sending out even a single probe is significant, and the fact that we have gotten to the point where we can build and launch such complicated robotic explorers as the MERs for less than $1B in just a couple years is so significant, it can barely be put it into words.
Furthermore, the less weight you carry, the easier and cheaper it is to launch from Earth. So if these probes (which are getting heavier and more sophisticated) carried less fuel and equipment (both of which they could pick up on a Moon base), the launches would be cheaper, more frequent, and we would advance faster. Eventually they could even be constructed entirely on the Moon and launched from there, bypassing the whole Earth gravity problem.
You know, when we used to push the boundaries of the known world by exploring via sea ships, it was quite advantageous to establish friendly ports on known islands. Ships could go further, have places to restock, and slowly build out the known world. This situation is not that much different from those times. And back then there were people who were just as content as you are to sit in their dirty little European cities where disease and corruption shaped destiny far more effectively than human creativity and spirit. Luckily the the bold and brave pushed outward anyway and opened up a new world anyway.
Unless it is specifically directed towards interplanetary spaceflight to planets beyond our own, I say leave it be until then.
Your "until then" is now. We already engage in significant interplanetary spaceflight. Building a refueling and repair port on the moon will make this very efficient.
Put out more energy than it takes in? Once again, never trust the AP for science.
Not sure if you were attempting humor or just being pedantic. Nobody's claiming to create a perpetual motion machine on the moon. I think we all know what they meant by that statement (i.e. not including energy stored in the Helium itself, which is presumably somewhat abundant), and it gets to the heart of the problem.
This happened to a friend of mine about 15 years ago. He worked in McDonald's, and he had the important responsiblity of getting new boxes of frozen chicken nuggets from the freezer when they ran out. So one day he goes back there, and they had just delivered new nuggets, and the boxes were stacked floor to ceiling. He's this little scrawny 16 yr old kid. He tries to get a box off, and something happens and the whole pile of HUNDREDS of pounds of nuggets and boxes drops on him, pinning him to the floor! So there he is in the freezer, not wearing any protection becuase he was just going to go in and out with a box of nuggets, but now he's freezing his ass off, trapped under a ton of frozen nugget boxes, and the door shuts! He thinks he gonna die, and he's sitting there on the cold floor shivering stuck for like an hour until somebody comes in to get something and sees him and rescues him from under the boxes. I know it didn't happen every day, but even spending an hour trapped under 20 boxes of frozen McNuggets in a freezer, while wearing a T-shirt, and then being ridiculed for the next six months by McDonalds employees is the worst I've ever heard.
CCDs are inherently black and white. Two main methods for capturing color data are 1) using alternating color filters (as is done on MER Spirit's Pancam) and 2) using a single patterned filter overley on top of the CCD (like most consumer digital cameras).
Here are some good links (from the site mentioned in the sig below) to read about the Pancam, including its various filters:
Not sure if all Aerogels are created equally, but this is from 1999 NASA article on Aerogel:
"A single one-inch thick windowpane of silica aerogel is equivalent to the insulation provided by 20 windowpanes of glass (R-20 insulation factor)."
The RAT is a diamond-tipped grinding tool capable of removing a
cylindrical area 4.5 cm in diameter and at least 0.5 cm deep from the outer surface of a rock.
This operation takes about 2 hours for a dense basalt.
The rover has a top speed on flat hard ground of 5 centimeters (2 inches) per second. However, in order to ensure a safe drive, the rover is equipped with hazard avoidance software that causes the rover to stop and reassess its location every few seconds. So, over time, the vehicle achieves an
average speed of 1 centimeter per second.
So moving one meter takes very roughly ~100 seconds (about a minute and a half). Grinding takes roughly two hours. But grinding is just grinding, and you still would want to do some science after that. Also consider that moving will generally be interrupted by other delays such as taking photos. Check the link in the sig below for all kinds of info and links on this type of stuff.
In fact it is approximately 10 minutes there and 10 minutes back. Here's how to find out. Go to John Walker's Orrery to find the current planet positions. Mars is indicated at 1.257 AU from Earth. Since we know one AU (Sun to Earth) takes about 8 min, then 8 x 1.3 = ~10 min. Check it out yourself, it's a great tool.
For this and more, check out the link in the sig below.
AAAhhhhhhhh what happened to the sane world we used to live in?????? Was it always this fucked up and we just didn't have pervasive media and communications to know about it or is it getting more and more fucked up as we go?
If there had to be a compelling economic argument for everything we do we'd still be living in caves!
OK you already got ripped into a few times for this statement, but let me actually give a link where you can read some more about this issue. Robert Wright (author of book Nonzero) (who also happens to have a website of the same name) makes a very powerful argument that every advancement in cultural evolution and science in our history as a species has been as a result of the games (as in Game Theory games) we play. Zero-sum games where I take something from you, and Nonzero-sum (i.e. positive sum) games where we cooperate and advance our common cause. Anyway, I can't do it justice in a few sentences, but it's a great book and well worth the read. At the very least, poke around the website (above).
anyone that matched orbits with your bus could just coast along and end up the same place that they would have without the bus.
Yes, but I think his point was that the tiny little ship you'd launch from Mars to catch the bus would be tiny, just to get to the bus: seats, pressure lock, enough fuel to escape gravity. Then the bus is HUGE, with a food supply, water purification system, gift shop, Mexican restaurant, arcade, and all the other things that make a 7+ month journey workable for humans. It's quite a good idea in fact.
And BTW, once we're in space, it doesn't matter how much radiation and waste we give off. We still can't outdo the amount put out by the Sun or contained within asteroids and meteorites.
Yeah nice argument. I've heard similar with regards to various deserts and remote landfills here on Earth. We even ship old battleships to India and other 3rd world countries, where "volunteers" strip the parts off, thereby exposing themselves to extremely harmful, radioactive, toxic materials. But those people are dirty anyway.
Kicking a few alpha particles into space is one thing. Exploding and spewing long half-life radioactive Plutonium, Cadmium, etc. etc. is another. It's not a extinction level threat if it happens once, but if we make this acceptable behavior, then the lines slowly get pushed further and further out, and our Solar System starts to become as contaminated as our oceans, air, and soil here on Earth.
Kinda laggy, but everything's looking good up here. I just found a new rock that was like a little bit redder than the other one I found yesterday. Cool.
High quality images are good for PR, but what I really want to know is how it extracts information from the environment, how this information is being used, and whether or not we found anything we didn't expect to find.
Another poster responded with some good details about the CCD cameras, but I think your question might be a bit more general... The MER Spirit has a very sophisticated set of scientific instruments on it, among which is the Panoramic Camera ("Pancam") which has returned many of the pretty high res photos we've seen, some in 3D.
It also has a Mini-TES (Thermal Emission Spectrometer), Microscopic Imager, Spectrometer, and lots more tools and instrumentation aboard.
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Relying on a single computer that is a few hundred million miles away is, should I dare say? Retarded..
We at NASA are attempting to minimize the amount of retarded engineering we do, but it is a long road, and we are making progress. A report from 1990 showed that as much as 30% of engineering work was severely Retarded, with a whopping 15.1% considered Cretinous, and approximately 3.6% Id10t1c. Since then, we have cut this figures in HALF. 2002 figures showed only 16.8% Retarded work, 6% Cretinous, and Id10t1c lowered below 1%.
We can't do this alone, and we appreciate the insight of posters such as "codepunk" pointing this out to us. As you know, we are very busy, and often forget about things like redundancy and failure cases. Thank you for bringing this retarded decision to our attention. May we be so kind as to extend a job offer to you in our Retardation Quality Asurance department, where I am sure you will make an excellent Retardation Analyst.
Go to your Slashdot Preferences, click on Comments tab. Or just click here.
You can adjust the modifiers for all adjectives. The default is 0 (which is +1 for positives and -1 for negatives), but you can, e.g., make Funny == -4.
I don't recommend it, though, because then you might miss funny Mars cartoons like this one.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
Sending out even a single probe is significant, and the fact that we have gotten to the point where we can build and launch such complicated robotic explorers as the MERs for less than $1B in just a couple years is so significant, it can barely be put it into words.
Furthermore, the less weight you carry, the easier and cheaper it is to launch from Earth. So if these probes (which are getting heavier and more sophisticated) carried less fuel and equipment (both of which they could pick up on a Moon base), the launches would be cheaper, more frequent, and we would advance faster. Eventually they could even be constructed entirely on the Moon and launched from there, bypassing the whole Earth gravity problem.
You know, when we used to push the boundaries of the known world by exploring via sea ships, it was quite advantageous to establish friendly ports on known islands. Ships could go further, have places to restock, and slowly build out the known world. This situation is not that much different from those times. And back then there were people who were just as content as you are to sit in their dirty little European cities where disease and corruption shaped destiny far more effectively than human creativity and spirit. Luckily the the bold and brave pushed outward anyway and opened up a new world anyway.
Unless it is specifically directed towards interplanetary spaceflight to planets beyond our own, I say leave it be until then.
Your "until then" is now. We already engage in significant interplanetary spaceflight. Building a refueling and repair port on the moon will make this very efficient.
Put out more energy than it takes in? Once again, never trust the AP for science.
Not sure if you were attempting humor or just being pedantic. Nobody's claiming to create a perpetual motion machine on the moon. I think we all know what they meant by that statement (i.e. not including energy stored in the Helium itself, which is presumably somewhat abundant), and it gets to the heart of the problem.
This happened to a friend of mine about 15 years ago. He worked in McDonald's, and he had the important responsiblity of getting new boxes of frozen chicken nuggets from the freezer when they ran out. So one day he goes back there, and they had just delivered new nuggets, and the boxes were stacked floor to ceiling. He's this little scrawny 16 yr old kid. He tries to get a box off, and something happens and the whole pile of HUNDREDS of pounds of nuggets and boxes drops on him, pinning him to the floor! So there he is in the freezer, not wearing any protection becuase he was just going to go in and out with a box of nuggets, but now he's freezing his ass off, trapped under a ton of frozen nugget boxes, and the door shuts! He thinks he gonna die, and he's sitting there on the cold floor shivering stuck for like an hour until somebody comes in to get something and sees him and rescues him from under the boxes. I know it didn't happen every day, but even spending an hour trapped under 20 boxes of frozen McNuggets in a freezer, while wearing a T-shirt, and then being ridiculed for the next six months by McDonalds employees is the worst I've ever heard.
Here are some good links (from the site mentioned in the sig below) to read about the Pancam, including its various filters:
- NASA Info on Pancam
- Athena Pancam Info
- Athena Pancam Technical Briefing
- Planetary Society Pancam Info
--For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
Not sure if all Aerogels are created equally, but this is from 1999 NASA article on Aerogel:
"A single one-inch thick windowpane of silica aerogel is equivalent to the insulation provided by 20 windowpanes of glass (R-20 insulation factor)."
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
Very good Aerogel FAQ.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
- It is 99.8% Air
- Provides 39 times more insulating than the best fiberglass insulation
- Is 1,000 times less dense than glass
- Was used on the Mars Pathfinder rover
And a cool picture of aerogel in somebody's hand.--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
Fax them a sheet of $20 bills to use up all their fax ink.
From NASA/JPL info on Rover and wheels:
So moving one meter takes very roughly ~100 seconds (about a minute and a half). Grinding takes roughly two hours. But grinding is just grinding, and you still would want to do some science after that. Also consider that moving will generally be interrupted by other delays such as taking photos. Check the link in the sig below for all kinds of info and links on this type of stuff.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
In fact it is approximately 10 minutes there and 10 minutes back. Here's how to find out. Go to John Walker's Orrery to find the current planet positions. Mars is indicated at 1.257 AU from Earth. Since we know one AU (Sun to Earth) takes about 8 min, then 8 x 1.3 = ~10 min. Check it out yourself, it's a great tool.
For this and more, check out the link in the sig below.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
Anybody know what OS the rover uses?
MER2004 Mars Rovers use an OS by Wind River. Read about it at that link (press release).
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
With all those links, you'd think maybe a Hubble link would surface... Here's a couple good ones:
Hubble For General Public
Hubble For Scientists
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
AAAhhhhhhhh what happened to the sane world we used to live in?????? Was it always this fucked up and we just didn't have pervasive media and communications to know about it or is it getting more and more fucked up as we go?
If there had to be a compelling economic argument for everything we do we'd still be living in caves!
OK you already got ripped into a few times for this statement, but let me actually give a link where you can read some more about this issue. Robert Wright (author of book Nonzero) (who also happens to have a website of the same name) makes a very powerful argument that every advancement in cultural evolution and science in our history as a species has been as a result of the games (as in Game Theory games) we play. Zero-sum games where I take something from you, and Nonzero-sum (i.e. positive sum) games where we cooperate and advance our common cause. Anyway, I can't do it justice in a few sentences, but it's a great book and well worth the read. At the very least, poke around the website (above).
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
anyone that matched orbits with your bus could just coast along and end up the same place that they would have without the bus.
Yes, but I think his point was that the tiny little ship you'd launch from Mars to catch the bus would be tiny, just to get to the bus: seats, pressure lock, enough fuel to escape gravity. Then the bus is HUGE, with a food supply, water purification system, gift shop, Mexican restaurant, arcade, and all the other things that make a 7+ month journey workable for humans. It's quite a good idea in fact.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
And BTW, once we're in space, it doesn't matter how much radiation and waste we give off. We still can't outdo the amount put out by the Sun or contained within asteroids and meteorites.
Yeah nice argument. I've heard similar with regards to various deserts and remote landfills here on Earth. We even ship old battleships to India and other 3rd world countries, where "volunteers" strip the parts off, thereby exposing themselves to extremely harmful, radioactive, toxic materials. But those people are dirty anyway.
Kicking a few alpha particles into space is one thing. Exploding and spewing long half-life radioactive Plutonium, Cadmium, etc. etc. is another. It's not a extinction level threat if it happens once, but if we make this acceptable behavior, then the lines slowly get pushed further and further out, and our Solar System starts to become as contaminated as our oceans, air, and soil here on Earth.
Yeah I got first post!!!
Kinda laggy, but everything's looking good up here. I just found a new rock that was like a little bit redder than the other one I found yesterday. Cool.
Please send more corn.
But they wouldn't sound anything like real sound, the pitch would be way off (kind of like hearing a sound underwater, but backwards)
... sretsaM dnuobhtraE ruoY nodnabA"
Then I hope the Martians don't start playing their subliminal messages to our little rover:
"... woN tcurtseD fleS
But seriously, here is NASA's page listing the Rover Instruments. No microphone. And for lots more info, check the link below.
-
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
For lots more info on the Pancam, other instruments on the rovers, and tons more history, news, status updates, video, 3d photos, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
High quality images are good for PR, but what I really want to know is how it extracts information from the environment, how this information is being used, and whether or not we found anything we didn't expect to find.
Another poster responded with some good details about the CCD cameras, but I think your question might be a bit more general... The MER Spirit has a very sophisticated set of scientific instruments on it, among which is the Panoramic Camera ("Pancam") which has returned many of the pretty high res photos we've seen, some in 3D.
It also has a Mini-TES (Thermal Emission Spectrometer), Microscopic Imager, Spectrometer, and lots more tools and instrumentation aboard.
A good starting point to find out more about the rover and instrument technology is:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.