There is the "Magic Carpet" which is the odd deformation of soil left after the airbag was retracted back under the lander to clear the way for the rover. This is right next to the lander.
Further out, there are numerous marks where the lander bounced during its landing stage and the airbags deformed the soil from impacts.
So basically, as far as I can tell, all the markings are from the airbag, either bouncing or scraping on the surface.
These rover updates are BY FAR more newsworthy than the latest Scott Peterson updates that seem to come in every couple of days on nearly all major news outlets.
Updates on the progress of the rover are NEW, and they are NEWS. I completely understand if you don't find it interesting, but in that case why do you click on the headlines, read the stories, and post about them? Just ignore them.
But why does it take so long for things to retract, the rover to move, etc etc.
OK, this is a fair question. Here are four big reasons.
1. As soon as it disembarks, there are hundreds of new risk factors that come up. So they want to make sure that if anything fails (e.g. airbag catches a wheel and knocks it over, breaking off the high gain antenna), at least they've gotten something for their incredible effort.
2. They ARE conducting scientific experiments while it is safely on the lander. It is furthermore slightly elevated and able to take panoramic photos from a position it will not again regain when on ground level.
3. Getting off the lander is DELICATE. There is a ~10 minute communications lag, which means ~20 minutes to give a command and see the results. This means everything must be done very carefully and very cautiously to make sure each minor step went off perfectly.
4. If they did it quickly and something broke, every "genius" on the internet would be saying how stupid NASA was for rushing ahead and how they never get anything right and were just trying to get publicity and blah blah blah blah blah. So let them do it the right way so the mission is a success.
This has links to tons of great information, images, QuickTimeVR, 3d images, videos, history, cartoons, and lots more about Mars and this MER Spirit mission in particular. Great as a springboard to look up more info as these issues (mud, water, etc.) come up.
So you're saying this "mud" may actually just be Martian rat urine?
That doesn't make any sense, because if there's no water, then what are the Martian rats drinking in the first place? See, it's gotta be something else.
I've been looking around various sites, but mostly keeping up with news about Spirit through google news. What is THE best site for up to the minute reports?
It would be the same kind of murder that happens between drug dealers and gang members who hang out on the street. Somebody gets shot, then everybody runs away, and nobody is willing to be a witness.
Call it "murder", "retaliation", "brutal gangland slaying", or whatever you want, but it will happen at some point, and nobody gives a shit about whether it's legal or not, because you're talking about underground activities that have shed that distinction in order to exist and be profitable.
every hardcore camper buys hightech gortex jackets, microfiber sweat wicking thermals, reverse osmosis water filters, carbon fiber tent poles. And silicone based lube so they can get fucked in the ass by a wandering bear.
It's a good point that much camping gear is high-tech and expensive, but I still feel that being warm and comfortable is somehow different from playing Quake (or what you suggested) with bears.
what exactly about space exploration is going to make the earth better than it is now? Only a tiny tiny percentage of the population will be able to afford to leave Earth.
You have to understand that:
1) New frontiers require signifiant manipulation to achieve large scale profitability.
2) Large scale profitability drives innovation, exploration, industry.
Historically this has been: building railroads, mining mountains, picking crops, building pyramids (getting further back here), etc. All of this requires significant work force, making ex-Earth living and working not just a luxury but a way to get a decent paying job for many people.
In a developed solar system, there is much work to do, and a lot of it may once again be mining and construction. Situation is a bit different now, because we can get robots to do a lot of work. But you just can't replace the dexterity and autonomy of a human, at least not now, and probably not for another 50 years.
So the result is that a lot of people will live and work elsewhere. And with resources coming in from off-Earth, and manufacturing going on off-Earth, it becomes easier to keep Earth clean. Everybody likes parks; it's just that some people like getting rich more than having parks. If they can get rich easily without destroying Earth, they will.
I definitely agree that the mosaics are a bit rough, but I'd *much* rather see a rough mosaic *today* than a polished one two weeks from now. I have faith that we'll get both.
At the time that our solar system is greatly developed and colonized, you will find that the Luna (our moon) has become a major transport hub, and that the Earth is a very lush residential garden planet.
Luna's lack of gravity makes it easier to land, refuel, refill, maintain, take off. It is an excellent storage post for mined resources and medium-scale manufacturing.
We will get to Mars, and we will live on Mars, but I can guarantee that there will be a grungy little spaceport dive bar on Luna before the first permanent residence is even attempted on Mars.
This has links to tons of great information, images, QuickTimeVR, 3d images, videos, history, and lots more about Mars and this MER Spirit mission in particular. I have been obsessively checking this page and branching out from there every couple of hours for the last few days.
I've been poking around for hours trying to find photos, information, etc., and realized that it's very hard to find the good stuff, but that a LOT of it is out there.
So I made this page (address below) and will continue to maintain it. It has (among other things) links to:
history on ALL past Mars attempts (those poor soviets...)
*many* JPL and NASA pages, diagrams, videos, and photos
info on sterescopic photos
Sterescopic layout of Spirit's first round of photos
nasa.gov only has JPEGs of the images on their website.
This is the issue then. Can somebody at NASA please release some raw images? Natural Three-d viewing is hard enough, and JPEG artifacts makes it worse.
The images are AWESOME, and the fact that they got posted online so quickly is fantastic. I'm just saying, if you have the raw data, please post that too. Thank you from all of us!
The way I understand the FAA's rules, once a pilot declares an emergency, they can do whatever they need to do in order to ensure the safety of the airplane and everyone aboard.
Like killing them, right?
That would be sweet.
"Folks, this is your captain speaking. I'm having a bit of a bad day, so I've declared an emergency and will be coming through the cabin and killing various people until I feel a bit better and ready to land the plane. Thank you. We are now cruising at 9000 feet."
If an al Qaeda operative wants to smash a plane into a building, he'll figure out a way to disable such a system.
Or more likely figure out how to engage such a system to take control from the pilots and have the plane crash into a building automatically without any terrorist presence. Terrorists have computers too. Most of the virii out in the world come from smart kids in poor countries (some employed indirectly by the AV companies themselves, but that's another issue). Keeping trusted people in the loop is often a GOOD thing.
I assume that spam is one of the last places where people believe that an ad driven business model will survive.
In most other forms of media, it seems that advertising has had its day.
What world are you living in? In the one that I inhabit, advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry. All of that brain sapping drivel pushed out on network television every night creates a captive audience to push sodas, alcohol, cars, and everything else that makes the (Western) world go round.
The fact that you and your friends use Tivo or listen to internet radio stations is only slightly more important than the fact that you use Linux at home. The rest of the world still uses M$ products and buys things because a commercial told them it will get them more pu$$y.
As for e-mail advertising, this is the latest (not even latest, but relatively recent) intrusion of advertising into communications mediums. Until people are willing to PAY for things (e.g. HBO) instead of being cheap greedy hypocrites, advertising will continue to infiltrate all communication and entertainment mediums.
Even when people are willing to pay for things, the advertisements will become more subtle and embedded, with product placements as perfectly nailed in the movie The Truman Show.
And the reason advertising continues to happen in e-mail is that the costs to advertise are getting less and less to the point that now if 1/10000 people buys Herbal Viagra or whatever crap is being sold, then it becomes worthwhile. So good luck convincing 100% of the people to stop buying stuff. Let's come up with realistic solutions.
As a family man, Snoop has devoted a large portion of his life to helping children and is in fact the football coach responsible for his team of 8 and 9 year olds reaching the playoffs. Try to see past the music and understand the man.
I suggest you check out this very well-written article, first in its original source (requires reg):
Daily Bulletin Archive
, and also duplicated (free) on the Snoop Heaven News Page.
Interesting choice of words. Didn't the Nazis similarly view Jews as leeches who drained the lifeblood of German society ?
That view was part of a drive for global conquest and an attempt to build the ultimate society. By contrast, Israel has a MINISCULE little piece of land in the desert (created in a large part to house those Jews that all the other countries so graciously kicked out) surrounded by millions of people who despise them, and it (Israel) wants little more than to live in peace. The "occupation" was a light-handed response to repeated massive assaults on them over the last century. This is how war works: someone attacks you, you fight, and then new lines are drawn. Yeah it sucks, but that's history. Read about it.
On the point of "leeches who drained the lifeflood of XXX society", that view is common and applied to many different XXX societies and peoples. Why? Because there are many zero-sum games in which parasitic leeching is a good strategy. It is what you do with that fact that is important. Invoking Nazism (which decided that genocide was the proper solution to this observation) is one of the oldest tricks in the book, but if you look at the situation closely, there is very little similarity between the two situations. Israel is willing and ready to make peace, but Palestinian authority demonstrates a complete failure and unwillingness to reign in terrorism and yield control of its military forces to this end, and furthermore rejected (autonomously without consent of council or public) gracious offers for peace including Camp David II (July 2000).
Stop posting anonymously if you have something to say.
Slashdot Mirror
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
There is the "Magic Carpet" which is the odd deformation of soil left after the airbag was retracted back under the lander to clear the way for the rover. This is right next to the lander.
Further out, there are numerous marks where the lander bounced during its landing stage and the airbags deformed the soil from impacts.
So basically, as far as I can tell, all the markings are from the airbag, either bouncing or scraping on the surface.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
These rover updates are BY FAR more newsworthy than the latest Scott Peterson updates that seem to come in every couple of days on nearly all major news outlets.
Updates on the progress of the rover are NEW, and they are NEWS. I completely understand if you don't find it interesting, but in that case why do you click on the headlines, read the stories, and post about them? Just ignore them.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
But why does it take so long for things to retract, the rover to move, etc etc.
OK, this is a fair question. Here are four big reasons.
1. As soon as it disembarks, there are hundreds of new risk factors that come up. So they want to make sure that if anything fails (e.g. airbag catches a wheel and knocks it over, breaking off the high gain antenna), at least they've gotten something for their incredible effort.
2. They ARE conducting scientific experiments while it is safely on the lander. It is furthermore slightly elevated and able to take panoramic photos from a position it will not again regain when on ground level.
3. Getting off the lander is DELICATE. There is a ~10 minute communications lag, which means ~20 minutes to give a command and see the results. This means everything must be done very carefully and very cautiously to make sure each minor step went off perfectly.
4. If they did it quickly and something broke, every "genius" on the internet would be saying how stupid NASA was for rushing ahead and how they never get anything right and were just trying to get publicity and blah blah blah blah blah. So let them do it the right way so the mission is a success.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
This has links to tons of great information, images, QuickTimeVR, 3d images, videos, history, cartoons, and lots more about Mars and this MER Spirit mission in particular. Great as a springboard to look up more info as these issues (mud, water, etc.) come up.
So you're saying this "mud" may actually just be Martian rat urine?
That doesn't make any sense, because if there's no water, then what are the Martian rats drinking in the first place? See, it's gotta be something else.
I've been looking around various sites, but mostly keeping up with news about Spirit through google news. What is THE best site for up to the minute reports?
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
This site has TONS of great links, animations, movies, cartoons, news, and everything else. I hit it and branch off from there many times a day.
It would be the same kind of murder that happens between drug dealers and gang members who hang out on the street. Somebody gets shot, then everybody runs away, and nobody is willing to be a witness.
Call it "murder", "retaliation", "brutal gangland slaying", or whatever you want, but it will happen at some point, and nobody gives a shit about whether it's legal or not, because you're talking about underground activities that have shed that distinction in order to exist and be profitable.
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH)
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
Historically this has been: building railroads, mining mountains, picking crops, building pyramids (getting further back here), etc. All of this requires significant work force, making ex-Earth living and working not just a luxury but a way to get a decent paying job for many people.
In a developed solar system, there is much work to do, and a lot of it may once again be mining and construction. Situation is a bit different now, because we can get robots to do a lot of work. But you just can't replace the dexterity and autonomy of a human, at least not now, and probably not for another 50 years.
So the result is that a lot of people will live and work elsewhere. And with resources coming in from off-Earth, and manufacturing going on off-Earth, it becomes easier to keep Earth clean. Everybody likes parks; it's just that some people like getting rich more than having parks. If they can get rich easily without destroying Earth, they will.
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
I definitely agree that the mosaics are a bit rough, but I'd *much* rather see a rough mosaic *today* than a polished one two weeks from now. I have faith that we'll get both.
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
Re:Skip the moon! Go straight to Mars!
At the time that our solar system is greatly developed and colonized, you will find that the Luna (our moon) has become a major transport hub, and that the Earth is a very lush residential garden planet.
Luna's lack of gravity makes it easier to land, refuel, refill, maintain, take off. It is an excellent storage post for mined resources and medium-scale manufacturing.
We will get to Mars, and we will live on Mars, but I can guarantee that there will be a grungy little spaceport dive bar on Luna before the first permanent residence is even attempted on Mars.
Look under "3-D glasses, sources" on the page below.
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, please visit: Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
This has links to tons of great information, images, QuickTimeVR, 3d images, videos, history, and lots more about Mars and this MER Spirit mission in particular. I have been obsessively checking this page and branching out from there every couple of hours for the last few days.
- history on ALL past Mars attempts (those poor soviets...)
- *many* JPL and NASA pages, diagrams, videos, and photos
- info on sterescopic photos
- Sterescopic layout of Spirit's first round of photos
- Quicktime VR of the Spirit's panoramic view
- etc.
Here is the page:2004 Mars Exploration Rover Mission History and Highlights:
http://axonchisel.net/etc/space/mars-exp-rover-hi
nasa.gov only has JPEGs of the images on their website.
This is the issue then. Can somebody at NASA please release some raw images? Natural Three-d viewing is hard enough, and JPEG artifacts makes it worse.
The images are AWESOME, and the fact that they got posted online so quickly is fantastic. I'm just saying, if you have the raw data, please post that too. Thank you from all of us!
"Folks, this is your captain speaking. I'm having a bit of a bad day, so I've declared an emergency and will be coming through the cabin and killing various people until I feel a bit better and ready to land the plane. Thank you. We are now cruising at 9000 feet."
If an al Qaeda operative wants to smash a plane into a building, he'll figure out a way to disable such a system.
Or more likely figure out how to engage such a system to take control from the pilots and have the plane crash into a building automatically without any terrorist presence. Terrorists have computers too. Most of the virii out in the world come from smart kids in poor countries (some employed indirectly by the AV companies themselves, but that's another issue). Keeping trusted people in the loop is often a GOOD thing.
I assume that spam is one of the last places where people believe that an ad driven business model will survive. In most other forms of media, it seems that advertising has had its day.
What world are you living in? In the one that I inhabit, advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry. All of that brain sapping drivel pushed out on network television every night creates a captive audience to push sodas, alcohol, cars, and everything else that makes the (Western) world go round.
The fact that you and your friends use Tivo or listen to internet radio stations is only slightly more important than the fact that you use Linux at home. The rest of the world still uses M$ products and buys things because a commercial told them it will get them more pu$$y.
As for e-mail advertising, this is the latest (not even latest, but relatively recent) intrusion of advertising into communications mediums. Until people are willing to PAY for things (e.g. HBO) instead of being cheap greedy hypocrites, advertising will continue to infiltrate all communication and entertainment mediums.
Even when people are willing to pay for things, the advertisements will become more subtle and embedded, with product placements as perfectly nailed in the movie The Truman Show.
And the reason advertising continues to happen in e-mail is that the costs to advertise are getting less and less to the point that now if 1/10000 people buys Herbal Viagra or whatever crap is being sold, then it becomes worthwhile. So good luck convincing 100% of the people to stop buying stuff. Let's come up with realistic solutions.
As a family man, Snoop has devoted a large portion of his life to helping children and is in fact the football coach responsible for his team of 8 and 9 year olds reaching the playoffs. Try to see past the music and understand the man.
I suggest you check out this very well-written article, first in its original source (requires reg): Daily Bulletin Archive , and also duplicated (free) on the Snoop Heaven News Page.
But repeatedly being funny potentially gets you FANS who then auto-upgrade your posts, which is equivalent to permanent karma among your fangroup.
This post is so insightful, it hurts.
Though it makes my head hurt to see Jerry Stiller and Snoop Dogg in a commercial together. That's just wrong on so many diffferent levels...
Now wait just one minnizle.
Saying "it is statistically proven that..." means as much as "i just took a shit in the bathroom".
Dude that's fucking disgusting, can you at least close the door?
On the point of "leeches who drained the lifeflood of XXX society", that view is common and applied to many different XXX societies and peoples. Why? Because there are many zero-sum games in which parasitic leeching is a good strategy. It is what you do with that fact that is important. Invoking Nazism (which decided that genocide was the proper solution to this observation) is one of the oldest tricks in the book, but if you look at the situation closely, there is very little similarity between the two situations. Israel is willing and ready to make peace, but Palestinian authority demonstrates a complete failure and unwillingness to reign in terrorism and yield control of its military forces to this end, and furthermore rejected (autonomously without consent of council or public) gracious offers for peace including Camp David II (July 2000).
Stop posting anonymously if you have something to say.