Yeah, cause the US robotic exploration program has been really weak the past 10 years. 3 rovers landed on Mars, 2 orbiters at Mars, the Cassini program, the Spitzer space telescope, Deep Impact, Star Dust, etc have been real crap.
What's wrong with it?
Address and Phone numbers are public information. Thanks to Maureen O'Gara's investigation, we might finally have some infomration about these shady anonymous cowards known as groklaw. I hope she continues the story and finds out the truth.
You HAVE to be friggin kidding... right? Please tell me you're joking... this piece is a smear job, pure and simple...
Have to disagree here - you can't discount the success or failure of program's in achieving goals. The Soviet's may have spent less, but its easy to spend less when your program's are such complete disaster's that you can't get a working space probe to Mars, or even design a useable launch vehicle for your Moon program.
The US program should not be penalized because it had far more ambitious goals, and mostly achieved them. Even saddled with the Space Shuttle - a vehicle created for political needs that were outdated by the time it was launched, it was able to achieve much of the same things the Soviet program was able to on the manned side - while far surpassing it on the robotic side.
And thats not counting the robotic exploration program... just looking at the past 25 years it has been highly succesful - during that period NASA has outachieved the European, Soviet/Russian, and Japanese program's combined in the field of robotic exploration.
The reason the Soviet space program was so much more efficient than the US space program
whaaaa? In what possible way could the Soviet space program be marked as "more efficient"?
After its early successes, most of its programs were failures. It could not keep up with the US in creating a lunar program. Its Mars missions were mostly failures. It had no presence in the outer solar system. The only bright spots it had were its Venus exploration program and the Mir space station - an orbiting station that had no real use besides prestige...
Well... OK - you got me - there is no "hell" in Judaism is a very simplistic answer. But its still pretty accurate.
It really boils down to this - Judaism, in contrast to almost every other major (or minor) religion out there - has a very weak concept of the afterlife. There really isn't a formal idea of what happens after death - and the ideas that are out there are fairly shallow - so even the concepts that resemble hell are very very simplistic - and lack the elaborate mythology that most religions have...So simultaneously you could get make a case in Judaism in believing that any of these things are possible after death to bad people:
-If your a denier of God and a really bad person, your soul is sent to Hell. Welcome to ultimate heat and lots o' pain.
-your soul is sent down to a place called Sheol, where you stand around (bored?) with lots of other souls. The really bad souls are punished or something. It kinda resembles Greek Hades. Sorta.
-your soul is sent to a place where your soul is cleansed for up to a year. It may be unpleasant.
The 3rd option is usually the accepted version of the afterlife for less than pure souls in modern rabbinic Judaism - the 2nd one was popular among some sects during ancient times. The 1st one was never really formalized - it may have been stolen from other religions in the area. I've heard other concepts of what could happen to bad souls (reincarnation, long review of your life - followed by review of what you could have accomplished if you hadn't screwed up, annhilation). Either way - they aren't really fleshed out - at least, not enough where you could write fiction, let alone a game about it.
OK - I can see you're really confused here - the problem isn't just with Satan/Lucifer - its with the idea of Hell itself. It just isn't in Judaism... Demons and Angels themselves are just messengers for God
So while the idea of supernatural forces with independent spirits are cool for RPG's - these are really Christian or pagan worldviews. Don't feel bad - a lot of writers like to throw Judeo-Christian around in popular writings, when they really mean Christian or Early Christian - it ends up confusing most of the general public about what beliefs Jews of that period actually held...
For Judaism, there are several games that love to play off of the classic "heaven vs. hell" war (without dealing with the person of Jesus as Christ). While I doubt Jews would want to play the games, many things are spun off of warped Judaic theology. Things that come to mind for this are Spawn (comic book and movie, not really a game), the Diablo series, and many other books/movies such as the "His Dark Materials" series and that one recent movie with Keanu Reeves in it -- the name eludes me atm.
While Dualism is a fascinating concept - its not a Jewish one... In the Jewish world view Satan is at worst (best?), a down-on-his-luck Prosecutor (its hard to win cases when your opponent is both Judge, and Defense Attorney). And there is no hell. At least not in a form recognizable to those familiar with the Christian after-life...
How is this a story? Nothing has changed and the same is true of any Earth/Moon grazing asteroid.
Suppose it makes good business sense for them... whenever their sales drop they could repeat this story and throw in the name of any decent sized asteroid that gets within lunar orbit...
And not only that - for the first time all the rocks aren't angled or jagged. They are all rounded. So that means lots of liquid erosion. Plus they are sunken into the ground - that means we landed in a really liquid rich environment.
Maybe the shoreline of some Titan lake/ocean at low tide?
Don't tell everyone you are going to show us the first pictures from different altitudes - show us a single picture, cut to some scientists, and then say bye-bye. grrr...
And meantime in the background you could see the raw pictures scrolling by on the overhead monitors...
Most of the data they were looking to recieve were atmospheric, and data on the immediate landing site. So this probe more than fulfills the mission goals of learning about the atmosphere, and get some basic scouting report on the surface.
I'm sure the next probe will be focussed more on the surface itself. Gotta start somewhere...
Nope - all we pick up is the carrier signal. We'd need a lot better recievers to pick up the data as well... I suppose they will keep tracking the signal just to see how long it lasts...
Well that was a bit of hyperbole in terms of the article writer...
The probe could still be transmitting now - but the problem is that the Cassini probe is the only one close enough to recieve it - and it only had line-of-sight with the Huygens Lander for a few hours. By the time they re-establish line of sight again (I have no idea when) - they landers batteries will be long run down - they were only designed to run a few hours once atmospheric entry began.
The last updates I've seen indicate that the lander is still sending out a signal - its just that Cassini is no longer in its line-of-sight so there is no one listening:)
First data should be coming in from Cassini any minute now...
they are able to find a _planet_ that is away more than 225 light years but they aren't able to point their telescopes toward the moon to find out if the vehicles from the moon landing are really there...
They can find the planet because its a big ball of matter glowing in the ir/light/uv spectrum against a backdrop of cold dark space.
The lander is a tiny piece of cold painted metal against a backdrop of lunar rock. That makes it a bit harder to see... next time we need to paint those suckers with radioactive glow-in-the-dark paint so that every schmuck on Earth can see it with binoculars. That'll shut the nay-sayers up.
...when they can confirm closer to 100%. This isn't the first time they've seen a dim point of light next to a star and hoped its a planet. Last time they waited a few months, they found out that the "planet" stayed put while the star moved on its merry way.
If the "planet" is still moving in concert with the star in a few months, then I'll believe it.
All classic (old) games - but there just isn't the same amount of good PBEM coming out nowadays - most are realtime oriented.
In my humble opinion though, for strategy oriented games, PBEM is the only way to go - otherwise all you are ultimately testing is your reflexes and mental quickness. Problem with PBEM is that you need dedicated opponents - and the more you have, the tougher it is to get them all to submit turns...
Slashdot Mirror
Please...
Cassini did this just last year... I can't believe NASA forgot already ;)
You HAVE to be friggin kidding... right? Please tell me you're joking... this piece is a smear job, pure and simple ...
The US program should not be penalized because it had far more ambitious goals, and mostly achieved them. Even saddled with the Space Shuttle - a vehicle created for political needs that were outdated by the time it was launched, it was able to achieve much of the same things the Soviet program was able to on the manned side - while far surpassing it on the robotic side.
And thats not counting the robotic exploration program... just looking at the past 25 years it has been highly succesful - during that period NASA has outachieved the European, Soviet/Russian, and Japanese program's combined in the field of robotic exploration.
whaaaa? In what possible way could the Soviet space program be marked as "more efficient"?
After its early successes, most of its programs were failures. It could not keep up with the US in creating a lunar program. Its Mars missions were mostly failures. It had no presence in the outer solar system. The only bright spots it had were its Venus exploration program and the Mir space station - an orbiting station that had no real use besides prestige...
Gehenna is the place of burning. Its probably what they called hell, 2000 years ago.
It really boils down to this - Judaism, in contrast to almost every other major (or minor) religion out there - has a very weak concept of the afterlife. There really isn't a formal idea of what happens after death - and the ideas that are out there are fairly shallow - so even the concepts that resemble hell are very very simplistic - and lack the elaborate mythology that most religions have...So simultaneously you could get make a case in Judaism in believing that any of these things are possible after death to bad people:
-If your a denier of God and a really bad person, your soul is sent to Hell. Welcome to ultimate heat and lots o' pain.
-your soul is sent down to a place called Sheol, where you stand around (bored?) with lots of other souls. The really bad souls are punished or something. It kinda resembles Greek Hades. Sorta.
-your soul is sent to a place where your soul is cleansed for up to a year. It may be unpleasant.
The 3rd option is usually the accepted version of the afterlife for less than pure souls in modern rabbinic Judaism - the 2nd one was popular among some sects during ancient times. The 1st one was never really formalized - it may have been stolen from other religions in the area. I've heard other concepts of what could happen to bad souls (reincarnation, long review of your life - followed by review of what you could have accomplished if you hadn't screwed up, annhilation). Either way - they aren't really fleshed out - at least, not enough where you could write fiction, let alone a game about it.
So while the idea of supernatural forces with independent spirits are cool for RPG's - these are really Christian or pagan worldviews. Don't feel bad - a lot of writers like to throw Judeo-Christian around in popular writings, when they really mean Christian or Early Christian - it ends up confusing most of the general public about what beliefs Jews of that period actually held...
While Dualism is a fascinating concept - its not a Jewish one... In the Jewish world view Satan is at worst (best?), a down-on-his-luck Prosecutor (its hard to win cases when your opponent is both Judge, and Defense Attorney). And there is no hell. At least not in a form recognizable to those familiar with the Christian after-life...
Suppose it makes good business sense for them... whenever their sales drop they could repeat this story and throw in the name of any decent sized asteroid that gets within lunar orbit...
Hey! Thats TWO pictures - one on NASA TV and another one on their webpage... at least until it crashed a few minutes ago :)
And not only that - for the first time all the rocks aren't angled or jagged. They are all rounded. So that means lots of liquid erosion. Plus they are sunken into the ground - that means we landed in a really liquid rich environment.
Maybe the shoreline of some Titan lake/ocean at low tide?
Its uh... small. And rocky... I need to squint more.
And meantime in the background you could see the raw pictures scrolling by on the overhead monitors...
Both :)
I'm sure the next probe will be focussed more on the surface itself. Gotta start somewhere...
Nope - all we pick up is the carrier signal. We'd need a lot better recievers to pick up the data as well... I suppose they will keep tracking the signal just to see how long it lasts...
The probe could still be transmitting now - but the problem is that the Cassini probe is the only one close enough to recieve it - and it only had line-of-sight with the Huygens Lander for a few hours. By the time they re-establish line of sight again (I have no idea when) - they landers batteries will be long run down - they were only designed to run a few hours once atmospheric entry began.
Spaceflightnow.com indicates that they are now recieving data - so we could be getting the goods as early as this afternoon...
First data should be coming in from Cassini any minute now...
Baby - if the mood I'm in now is misery, I hope they never find out :)
They can find the planet because its a big ball of matter glowing in the ir/light/uv spectrum against a backdrop of cold dark space.
The lander is a tiny piece of cold painted metal against a backdrop of lunar rock. That makes it a bit harder to see... next time we need to paint those suckers with radioactive glow-in-the-dark paint so that every schmuck on Earth can see it with binoculars. That'll shut the nay-sayers up.
If the "planet" is still moving in concert with the star in a few months, then I'll believe it.
Agreed - about the only good "real time" games out there are the ones that break out of the warcraft mold - such as Europa Universalis.
I've been in active PBEM (or PBIM) games of:
Warlords 3
Empire Deluxe
VGA Planets
All classic (old) games - but there just isn't the same amount of good PBEM coming out nowadays - most are realtime oriented.
In my humble opinion though, for strategy oriented games, PBEM is the only way to go - otherwise all you are ultimately testing is your reflexes and mental quickness. Problem with PBEM is that you need dedicated opponents - and the more you have, the tougher it is to get them all to submit turns...