I think I just realized why Bush wants to go to Mars. Someday, Guantanimo Bay is going to fill up, and we're going to need somewhere to send the "enemy combatants." Future generations won't learn about Rapy McRape, they'll learn about Nukey bin Terrorist, Howard Dean, and Bob Smith (who hurt Bush's friends^H^H^H^H^H^Hthe country by trading in his Hummer for a Prius).
As opposed to Bush, who ensures his buddies' continued profits by giving tax breaks to people who buy Hummers. Clinton may have raised the temperature in the Oval Office, but Bush is raising the temperature of the entire planet.
Not really. You want to land something on the surface so you can examine the rocks, soil, atmosphere, etc. up close. However, you don't want to send humans because sending humans would make the mission far more expensive (humans would need a lot more food, oxygen, and energy than a rover, and also the humans would have to be brought back to Earth). With these requirements, you're pretty much left with landing an unmanned vehicle on the surface. By the way, NASA has been doing an excellent job with a very small (by space exploration standards) budget. These Mars rover missions are among the most efficient missions NASA has ever had.
(a) If there's life on Mars, of course it will be different from life on Earth -- but we will still want to know HOW it's different. It would be like never travelling to a foreign country because you already know the USA (or whatever your home country is) is unique.
(b) GWB will never "tell you your taxes are going up." He'll "pay" for the "war on terrorism" by cutting taxes, not raising them.
(c) s/RAII/RIAA
(d) What does funding NASA have to do with political oppression?
(e) I agree with the 2nd paragraph. I'd like to add that I predict we will have cities on Mars (and the Opportunity landing site will be a historical monument, admission $5, kids under 12 and seniors $2, or free with a National Parks Pass or Golden Age Passport) before we win either the war on drugs or the war on terrorism.
It's better than those insane priest trolls that gets posted around here. Remember, all the ascii art on slashdot has to make it past the lameness filter.
Spirit 'upgraded from critical to serious' Sunday, January 25, 2004 Posted: 12:40 AM EST (0540 GMT)
PASADENA, California (CNN) -- Opportunity, the second of NASA's twin rovers, has made the descent to the surface of Mars, touching down successfully at 0505 GMT Sunday (12:05 a.m. ET).
NASA now has two rovers on the ground, after Spirit landed on the red planet exactly three weeks ago on January 3. Though Spirit's landing was near perfect, the rover mission has had serious complications in recent days.
"We're on Mars everybody," mission scientist Wayne Lee declared as fellow members monitoring the landing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory burst into wild applause.
Dampened by the problems with Spirit, it had been a nervous few moments at mission control as NASA officials counted down and checked off the various descent maneuvers during what appeared to be a flawless six-minute sequence.
As planned, the airbag-encased craft bounced on the Martian surface and rolled gently for a few minutes before coming to a complete stop upside down.
NASA was awaiting further signals and communications from Opportunity, including images of the landing site.
There were "no fault tones" detected in the radio signals back to Earth, suggesting that the spacecraft arrived in good shape on Mars, a mission control official said.
Opportunity is an exact replica of Spirit but was programmed to land about 6,600 miles (10,620 km) away on the opposite side of the planet, in an area known as the Meridiani Planum -- a smooth plain near Mars' equator, believed to be full of iron-bearing hematite.
The semi-precious mineral usually forms on Earth in the presence of liquid water -- leading scientists to think that water once flowed there.
The area is believed to be quite different from the reddish soil of Gusev Crater, where Spirit landed earlier this month.
Opportunity's site makes the landing more difficult than Spirit's, mission manager Jim Erickson said.
It is also the highest altitude landing by NASA on Mars.
In addition, Mars' increased distance from Earth would lengthen the time needed to communicate with the spacecraft.
Troubles with Spirit Scientists are hoping the rover won't have the same problems that have hit Spirit this week.
That rover was set to use its tools to examine a nearby boulder when NASA lost contact with the vehicle.
But NASA engineers found a work-around Saturday for Spirit's problems, re-established communication and regained the ability to control it.
"This is very good news," project manager Pete Theisinger told reporters.
Spirit's condition, Theisinger said, "has been upgraded from critical to serious."
The rover is probably "three weeks away from driving," he said, as engineers study the problems and try to correct them with additional work-arounds in the meantime.
NASA engineers are working to trace the source of the problem as it could have implications on Opportunity's mission.
Spirit uses Flash memory to communicate with the flight software to establish a file structure and will shut itself down if the process is interrupted, Theisinger said.
Engineers guessed that Spirit's troubles were in its Flash memory and set about sending the rover a complex series of instructions to see if they could get it to bypass the corrupted memory.
Theisinger said engineers sent Spirit a command just before its daily "waking up," telling it to shut down and restart in what is known as "cripple mode," using RAM instead of Flash for its start-up instructions.
"That is precisely what happened," Theisinger said, and Spirit then sent an hour's worth of data back to Pasadena.
"Something in the flight software talking to the Flash memory is causing us difficulty," Theisinger said.
He said engineers did not know caused the problem, but if it is purely a software problem, it is likely fixable. If, however, a problem in the hardware is affecting the software, repair may not be possible.
But, "we have a vehicle that is stable now," he said.
Only 20' by 20'? That's four hundred square feet of space! A sprawling mansion like that in the Bay Area must cost at least a million dollars, minimum. Or at least a good fraction of a million.
They have dishes in 2 other locations (Spain and the Mojave Desert), so if it was just a broken dish in Australia, they would have been able to communicate with the rover by now.
If you remove every third letter from this "article repost," encrypt it with rot-17 encryption, cross-multiply the result with Chapter 23 of the Book of Exodus, and insert the lines of Linux code that infringe on SCO's copyright, you will get a JPG representation of the goatse.cx picture! Beware! Mod Down! Parent is a troll!
1. Go to the anti-slash.org web site. 2. In the upper-right corner, click on "tools." 3. Click the link to "Use the Database Tool." 4. Type your user name in the Author field. 5. Look for your plagiarized comment in the search results (the site also provides you with a link to the original story).
You can also go directly to the database tool (without having to click on the links I described) by going to http://www.anti-slash.org/tools/db/.
From reading the comments, it sounds like whoever's running the mirror site is switching it back and forth between goatse and non-goatse. Thus, we have this "parent is a troll, no you're a troll, no YOU'RE a troll..." thread. I can't check it myself though because I'm at work.
The Martians are attacking us? I sure am glad President Bush is building a missile defense shield. Surely it can be adapted to defend against rocks from outer space too. King George will protect us from the Martian evildoers!
10 pounds??? Did you RTFA? The density of aerogel is.003g/cm3, so 10 pounds = 4.54kg would take up (4540g)/(.003g/cm3) = 1,513,333cm3 = 1.513 CUBIC METERS. I don't know anyone whose ass could take that volume of anything... actually I do, but his site is down.
To keep this vaguely on topic, I'll bet FedEx would hate me if I tried to ship several cubic meters of this stuff, since they charge by weight.
You were driving. You weren't in the coverage area. You were in a restaurant/theater/etc. You were talking on your other phone. The phone ran out of batteries. You left it on vibrate and took it out of your pocket. You didn't hear it ringing. You were in a meeting. You were taking a leak. The service provider sucks; call must not have gone through. etc.
Why outlaw the glasses when the casinos can use them to their advantage? Blackjack dealers could ask the players if they're counting cards. The Gaming Control Board could ask the casino employees if they're rigging the slot machines or otherwise cheating.
The reason that they are inefficient is that the exhaust velocity is too high. It turns out that the optimum exhaust velocity for minimum energy is about 2/3 the mission delta-v- and the delta-v to get to the moon is about 4.1 km/s whereas an ion drive exhaust velocity is usually around 30km/s... hugely too high from an energetic point of view.
They're not trying to minimize the amount of energy used. They're trying to minimize the weight of the vehicle. Yes, the solar panels have to be bigger if they eject the ions at a higher speed, but this is more than made up for by not having to carry as much fuel.
I don't doubt that chemical rockets have a very high energetic efficiency, but they come with the major disadvantage that you have to transport all the energy out of the gravity well and into low earth orbit. With solar energy, you can wait until you're in space to collect it, so it's OK if you can't use it as efficiently.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I just realized why Bush wants to go to Mars. Someday, Guantanimo Bay is going to fill up, and we're going to need somewhere to send the "enemy combatants." Future generations won't learn about Rapy McRape, they'll learn about Nukey bin Terrorist, Howard Dean, and Bob Smith (who hurt Bush's friends^H^H^H^H^H^Hthe country by trading in his Hummer for a Prius).
As opposed to Bush, who ensures his buddies' continued profits by giving tax breaks to people who buy Hummers. Clinton may have raised the temperature in the Oval Office, but Bush is raising the temperature of the entire planet.
Not really. You want to land something on the surface so you can examine the rocks, soil, atmosphere, etc. up close. However, you don't want to send humans because sending humans would make the mission far more expensive (humans would need a lot more food, oxygen, and energy than a rover, and also the humans would have to be brought back to Earth). With these requirements, you're pretty much left with landing an unmanned vehicle on the surface. By the way, NASA has been doing an excellent job with a very small (by space exploration standards) budget. These Mars rover missions are among the most efficient missions NASA has ever had.
(a) If there's life on Mars, of course it will be different from life on Earth -- but we will still want to know HOW it's different. It would be like never travelling to a foreign country because you already know the USA (or whatever your home country is) is unique.
(b) GWB will never "tell you your taxes are going up." He'll "pay" for the "war on terrorism" by cutting taxes, not raising them.
(c) s/RAII/RIAA
(d) What does funding NASA have to do with political oppression?
(e) I agree with the 2nd paragraph. I'd like to add that I predict we will have cities on Mars (and the Opportunity landing site will be a historical monument, admission $5, kids under 12 and seniors $2, or free with a National Parks Pass or Golden Age Passport) before we win either the war on drugs or the war on terrorism.
It's better than those insane priest trolls that gets posted around here. Remember, all the ascii art on slashdot has to make it past the lameness filter.
Opportunity lands on Mars
.
Spirit 'upgraded from critical to serious'
Sunday, January 25, 2004 Posted: 12:40 AM EST (0540 GMT)
PASADENA, California (CNN) -- Opportunity, the second of NASA's twin rovers, has made the descent to the surface of Mars, touching down successfully at 0505 GMT Sunday (12:05 a.m. ET).
NASA now has two rovers on the ground, after Spirit landed on the red planet exactly three weeks ago on January 3. Though Spirit's landing was near perfect, the rover mission has had serious complications in recent days.
"We're on Mars everybody," mission scientist Wayne Lee declared as fellow members monitoring the landing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory burst into wild applause
Dampened by the problems with Spirit, it had been a nervous few moments at mission control as NASA officials counted down and checked off the various descent maneuvers during what appeared to be a flawless six-minute sequence.
As planned, the airbag-encased craft bounced on the Martian surface and rolled gently for a few minutes before coming to a complete stop upside down.
NASA was awaiting further signals and communications from Opportunity, including images of the landing site.
There were "no fault tones" detected in the radio signals back to Earth, suggesting that the spacecraft arrived in good shape on Mars, a mission control official said.
Opportunity is an exact replica of Spirit but was programmed to land about 6,600 miles (10,620 km) away on the opposite side of the planet, in an area known as the Meridiani Planum -- a smooth plain near Mars' equator, believed to be full of iron-bearing hematite.
The semi-precious mineral usually forms on Earth in the presence of liquid water -- leading scientists to think that water once flowed there.
The area is believed to be quite different from the reddish soil of Gusev Crater, where Spirit landed earlier this month.
Opportunity's site makes the landing more difficult than Spirit's, mission manager Jim Erickson said.
It is also the highest altitude landing by NASA on Mars.
In addition, Mars' increased distance from Earth would lengthen the time needed to communicate with the spacecraft.
Troubles with Spirit
Scientists are hoping the rover won't have the same problems that have hit Spirit this week.
That rover was set to use its tools to examine a nearby boulder when NASA lost contact with the vehicle.
But NASA engineers found a work-around Saturday for Spirit's problems, re-established communication and regained the ability to control it.
"This is very good news," project manager Pete Theisinger told reporters.
Spirit's condition, Theisinger said, "has been upgraded from critical to serious."
The rover is probably "three weeks away from driving," he said, as engineers study the problems and try to correct them with additional work-arounds in the meantime.
NASA engineers are working to trace the source of the problem as it could have implications on Opportunity's mission.
Spirit uses Flash memory to communicate with the flight software to establish a file structure and will shut itself down if the process is interrupted, Theisinger said.
Engineers guessed that Spirit's troubles were in its Flash memory and set about sending the rover a complex series of instructions to see if they could get it to bypass the corrupted memory.
Theisinger said engineers sent Spirit a command just before its daily "waking up," telling it to shut down and restart in what is known as "cripple mode," using RAM instead of Flash for its start-up instructions.
"That is precisely what happened," Theisinger said, and Spirit then sent an hour's worth of data back to Pasadena.
"Something in the flight software talking to the Flash memory is causing us difficulty," Theisinger said.
He said engineers did not know caused the problem, but if it is purely a software problem, it is likely fixable. If, however, a problem in the hardware is affecting the software, repair may not be possible.
But, "we have a vehicle that is stable now," he said.
On one, she listed her work address as 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC. Guess what her job description was?
If this was during the Clinton administration, this was probably the one and only form she filled out with accurate information.
Sorry, but someone had to say it.
Only 20' by 20'? That's four hundred square feet of space! A sprawling mansion like that in the Bay Area must cost at least a million dollars, minimum. Or at least a good fraction of a million.
Money earned through illegal means, like price fixing?
They have dishes in 2 other locations (Spain and the Mojave Desert), so if it was just a broken dish in Australia, they would have been able to communicate with the rover by now.
If you remove every third letter from this "article repost," encrypt it with rot-17 encryption, cross-multiply the result with Chapter 23 of the Book of Exodus, and insert the lines of Linux code that infringe on SCO's copyright, you will get a JPG representation of the goatse.cx picture! Beware! Mod Down! Parent is a troll!
How to prove that your comment was stolen:
1. Go to the anti-slash.org web site.
2. In the upper-right corner, click on "tools."
3. Click the link to "Use the Database Tool."
4. Type your user name in the Author field.
5. Look for your plagiarized comment in the search results (the site also provides you with a link to the original story).
You can also go directly to the database tool (without having to click on the links I described) by going to http://www.anti-slash.org/tools/db/.
From reading the comments, it sounds like whoever's running the mirror site is switching it back and forth between goatse and non-goatse. Thus, we have this "parent is a troll, no you're a troll, no YOU'RE a troll..." thread. I can't check it myself though because I'm at work.
I've found that the lameness filter likes periods. If I recall correctly, a number of the ASCII art trolls use periods. I'm not sure about commas.
The Martians are attacking us? I sure am glad President Bush is building a missile defense shield. Surely it can be adapted to defend against rocks from outer space too. King George will protect us from the Martian evildoers!
I'll trade you a coin from ancient Rome (dated 79 B.C.) for one of your Mars rocks.
To keep this vaguely on topic, I'll bet FedEx would hate me if I tried to ship several cubic meters of this stuff, since they charge by weight.
How is this possible? The SCO barratry hadn't started yet 4.3 years ago.
There's no shortage of plausible excuses...
You were driving.
You weren't in the coverage area.
You were in a restaurant/theater/etc.
You were talking on your other phone.
The phone ran out of batteries.
You left it on vibrate and took it out of your pocket.
You didn't hear it ringing.
You were in a meeting.
You were taking a leak.
The service provider sucks; call must not have gone through.
etc.
Why outlaw the glasses when the casinos can use them to their advantage? Blackjack dealers could ask the players if they're counting cards. The Gaming Control Board could ask the casino employees if they're rigging the slot machines or otherwise cheating.
Somebody at NASA must have a AAA membership. Let them worry about how to tow it.
UCLA? When I think of East Coast schools that do rocket science, I always think of the University of California at Los Angeles :-)
For the West Coast, try Caltech, which runs JPL.
They're not trying to minimize the amount of energy used. They're trying to minimize the weight of the vehicle. Yes, the solar panels have to be bigger if they eject the ions at a higher speed, but this is more than made up for by not having to carry as much fuel.
I don't doubt that chemical rockets have a very high energetic efficiency, but they come with the major disadvantage that you have to transport all the energy out of the gravity well and into low earth orbit. With solar energy, you can wait until you're in space to collect it, so it's OK if you can't use it as efficiently.
You're expected to be a good little consumer and buy whatever product is offered to you.
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