Glory Days;1240854 wrote:and this is different from any other mars landing because......?

"It's called the Mars Science Laboratory for a reason, it is quite literally a fully equipped roving science lab, and now it's on Mars. If you were to outfit a lab and send it to Mars as part of a manned mission there are very few things that you'd put in it that aren't on this rover. It has a gas chromatograph coupled to a mass spectrometer and a laser spectrometer. It can drill into rock and take samples. It can "brush" the dirt off distant rocks by blasting it with a laser, then take spectra of the underlying rock. It can study the microscopic structure of minerals up close with a microscope. It can determine the mineral composition of rocks non-destructively with its alpha-particle x-ray spectrometer and its x-ray diffraction and fluorescence spectrometer. It can detect the presence of underground water or ice by sending out neutron pulses and measuring the response. Oh, and it will be able to take multi-spectral 3D images of the surface using its mast mounted cameras. And that's not all of it.

Oh, and it's nuclear powered and capable of operating 25/7 for years. This thing is a goddamned science terminator."

It has so much more than any of the other rovers we've sent.

Gotta make this one count....not much "left in the pipeline" for NASA right now.

I happened to be at Kennedy Space Center last summer when the last shuttle mission was up. A very wonderous place. :thumbup:We spent two days there....could have spent 3 or 4.

I am always saddened by those people who just don't appreciate this.

[video=youtube;ISmWAyQxqqs][/video]

For people bitching about the "waste" of money, you do realize that the TARP bailout was more money than the entire 50+ year budget of NASA, don't you? Even adjusted for inflation, we spent more money down the drain on the bailout and what did we get for it? I think the NASA budget should be doubled, it's one of the very few things we actually spend on that's worth it.

Eh, I was born and raised on the Apollo moon missions. Watched every launch of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo when I was a kid. Stayed up late to watch Neil Armstrong step on the moon. Had a moon globe and a LEM model on my bedroom dresser.

At that time I knew for certain that we'd have colonies on the moon and would have walked on Mars by the year 2000.

Then, of course, they canceled the Apollo missions because - well - they were outrageously expensive.

Granted 2.5 billion dollars seems like chump change in an era when we'll easily blow $800 billion in worthless pork spending and add yet another entitlement program we'll never be able to pay for to our mounting national debt.

Honestly, I have no real issues with the Mars rovers program and, of course, the search for the elusive extraterrestrial microbe.

Who knows? Maybe the rocks we collect on Mars might provide a cure for breast cancer. Or then again maybe that 2.5 billion dollars could have been better spent right here on Earth to find that same cure.

But the rover missions do seem to be a symbolic "really?"

In a time when the Feds need to get their fiscal house in order, it might give us a few thrills, provide a twinge of national pride, and the offshoot technologies might be the start of a new wave of consumer conveniences. After all the Apollo program gave us Tang, computers, and velcro.

For the short-term, however, this is just a bigger, more robust, and naturally more expensive Martian rock collector than the preceding rover missions.

If the Curiosity mission provides us with an Earth (Mars?) shattering scientific revelation that alters our perception of reality, I'll be the first to admit I was short-sighted and wrong.

Meanwhile.....$$$$$$$$ ka-ching!

I think the NASA budget should be doubled, it's one of the very few things we actually spend on that's worth it.

I agree.

might be the start of a new wave of consumer conveniences. After all the Apollo program gave us Tang, computers, and velcro.

I think that attempts to minimize what the space program does in order to bolster the perennial ad nauseum arguement that we could spend the money on more earthly needs....if not breast cancer research, then certainly we could feed a lot of hungry mouths and/or write bigger welfare checks.

I think expenditures on NASA fall into the category of 'good' government spending...spending that provides what the private sector can't. That is, pushing the envelope on technology for things that don't have a practical use ...yet. I think it keeps us ahead militarily. I think it keeps good engineers employed and in abundance here. While it is difficult to quantify in dollar value, I find it fitting as a kind of manifest destiny.

believer;1241242 wrote: Meanwhile.....$$$$$$$$ ka-ching!

The space program has produced economic benefit multiple orders of magnitude greater than its cost. If this one is a bust, so be it.

I Wear Pants;1241027 wrote:"It's called the Mars Science Laboratory for a reason, it is quite literally a fully equipped roving science lab, and now it's on Mars. If you were to outfit a lab and send it to Mars as part of a manned mission there are very few things that you'd put in it that aren't on this rover. It has a gas chromatograph coupled to a mass spectrometer and a laser spectrometer. It can drill into rock and take samples. It can "brush" the dirt off distant rocks by blasting it with a laser, then take spectra of the underlying rock. It can study the microscopic structure of minerals up close with a microscope. It can determine the mineral composition of rocks non-destructively with its alpha-particle x-ray spectrometer and its x-ray diffraction and fluorescence spectrometer. It can detect the presence of underground water or ice by sending out neutron pulses and measuring the response. Oh, and it will be able to take multi-spectral 3D images of the surface using its mast mounted cameras. And that's not all of it.

Oh, and it's nuclear powered and capable of operating 25/7 for years. This thing is a goddamned science terminator."

It has so much more than any of the other rovers we've sent.

so it does what every rover has done before this one(such as collecting samples and drilling into rocks, taking pictures and mapping etc), but with today's technology...yawn.

not saying we shouldnt be exploring space, but i am not going to get my panties in a bunch for something we have done before.

a great example of great accomplishment by an American government agency.

It's not so much a question of whether or not NASA does good things (i.e. Apollo, Mercury, Gemini, Hubble, this damn thing etc), it's whether the program does it well.

Now, one would probably say "how the fucking hell can you say that you can land on Mars poorly?!" And yeah, that's probably true. They are very very very very good at their calculations. But studies have shown that NASA is not unique and that private sector leadership can be more efficient.

You want to land on the moon again? Awesome, let's bid it out to private companies. The military does it with their projects, NASA can too.

If you're thinking NASA is some efficient machine without an ounce of bureaucracy, you are dead wrong.

sjmvsfscs08;1241381 wrote:It's not so much a question of whether or not NASA does good things (i.e. Apollo, Mercury, Gemini, Hubble, this damn thing etc), it's whether the program does it well.

Now, one would probably say "how the fucking hell can you say that you can land on Mars poorly?!" And yeah, that's probably true. They are very very very very good at their calculations. But studies have shown that NASA is not unique and that private sector leadership can be more efficient.

You want to land on the moon again? Awesome, let's bid it out to private companies. The military does it with their projects, NASA can too.

If you're thinking NASA is some efficient machine without an ounce of bureaucracy, you are dead wrong.

Ok so increase the budget of what NASA would do and let private companies bid to get chunks of it to accomplish what we want. But that's not the proposal we're hearing out of the GOP/conservatives (though honestly the Dems aren't resisting it much) we're hearing how we need to cut the budgets and that's it.

The Curiosity rover project is budgeted $2.5 billion, $1.9 billion was spent getting it to Mars and the rest will pay for doing science for the next 4 years or so.

The daily cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is somewhere in the realm of $2-3.5 billion dollars. That's like 3285 Mars rovers since 2003.

Either way we need to be spending more money on things like human progress (NASA, vaccine research, etc) and education and less money on bombs and prisons and security theater at airports.

Obama is the one who has been cutting NASA's budget, it actually increased under Bush. So, conservatives aren't the science hating morons that the media likes to make them out to be.

tk421;1241494 wrote:Obama is the one who has been cutting NASA's budget, it actually increased under Bush. So, conservatives aren't the science hating morons that the media likes to make them out to be.

Well yes, yes they are (not morons, but they are for cutting the NASA budget and would vote as such). But like I said, Dems haven't been much better either.

Also, wouldn't the NASA budget fall more to the responsibility of the house and not the President?

HitsRus;1241272 wrote:I think expenditures on NASA fall into the category of 'good' government spending...spending that provides what the private sector can't. That is, pushing the envelope on technology for things that don't have a practical use ...yet. I think it keeps us ahead militarily. I think it keeps good engineers employed and in abundance here. While it is difficult to quantify in dollar value, I find it fitting as a kind of manifest destiny.

Again, generally I agree. In the big picture, this gubmint spending is relatively inexpensive.

Nevertheless I can still see more practical "terran" ways of spending taxpayer dollars at a time when we're driving our economic sanity off a multi-trillion dollar national debt cliff.

Glory Days;1241303 wrote:so it does what every rover has done before this one(such as collecting samples and drilling into rocks, taking pictures and mapping etc), but with today's technology...yawn.

not saying we shouldnt be exploring space, but i am not going to get my panties in a bunch for something we have done before.

No, what I just typed is not at all the type of things the past ones were capable of doing.

believer;1241512 wrote:Again, generally I agree. In the big picture, this gubmint spending is relatively inexpensive.

Nevertheless I can still see more practical "terran" ways of spending taxpayer dollars at a time when we're driving our economic sanity off a multi-trillion dollar national debt cliff.

Sure but rather than cutting things that are genuine achievements of humanity I'd rather we cut absolutely shit programs such as the TSA and some of the entitlements.

I Wear Pants;1241027 wrote:"It's called the Mars Science Laboratory for a reason, it is quite literally a fully equipped roving science lab, and now it's on Mars. If you were to outfit a lab and send it to Mars as part of a manned mission there are very few things that you'd put in it that aren't on this rover. It has a gas chromatograph coupled to a mass spectrometer and a laser spectrometer. It can drill into rock and take samples. It can "brush" the dirt off distant rocks by blasting it with a laser, then take spectra of the underlying rock. It can study the microscopic structure of minerals up close with a microscope. It can determine the mineral composition of rocks non-destructively with its alpha-particle x-ray spectrometer and its x-ray diffraction and fluorescence spectrometer. It can detect the presence of underground water or ice by sending out neutron pulses and measuring the response. Oh, and it will be able to take multi-spectral 3D images of the surface using its mast mounted cameras. And that's not all of it.

Oh, and it's nuclear powered and capable of operating 25/7 for years. This thing is a goddamned science terminator."

It has so much more than any of the other rovers we've sent.

Mars Rover Opportunity:

Fixed science/engineering instruments include:

• Panoramic Camera (Pancam) – examines the texture, color, mineralogy, and structure of the local terrain.
• Navigation Camera (Navcam) – monochrome with a higher field of view but lower resolution, for navigation and driving.
• Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES) – identifies promising rocks and soils for closer examination, and determines the processes that formed them.
• Hazcams, two B&W cameras with 120 degree field of view, that provide additional data about the rover's surroundings.

The rover arm holds the following instruments:

• Mössbauer spectrometer (MB) MIMOS II – used for close-up investigations of the mineralogy of iron-bearing rocks and soils.
• Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) – close-up analysis of the abundances of elements that make up rocks and soils.
• Magnets – for collecting magnetic dust particles
• Microscopic Imager (MI) – obtains close-up, high-resolution images of rocks and soils.
• Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) – exposes fresh material for examination by instruments on board.

So spectrometes, Xrays, rock drilling tools and high tech cameras.......

Glory Days;1242144 wrote:So spectrometes, Xrays, rock drilling tools and high tech cameras.......

And magnets...don't forget the magnets! Yep...the latest in exploration technologies to be sure.

believer;1242151 wrote:And magnets...don't forget the magnets! Yep...the latest in exploration technologies to be sure.

It's all ball bearings nowadays.

Glory Days;1242144 wrote:Mars Rover Opportunity:

Fixed science/engineering instruments include:

• Panoramic Camera (Pancam) – examines the texture, color, mineralogy, and structure of the local terrain.
• Navigation Camera (Navcam) – monochrome with a higher field of view but lower resolution, for navigation and driving.
• Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES) – identifies promising rocks and soils for closer examination, and determines the processes that formed them.
• Hazcams, two B&W cameras with 120 degree field of view, that provide additional data about the rover's surroundings.

The rover arm holds the following instruments:

• Mössbauer spectrometer (MB) MIMOS II – used for close-up investigations of the mineralogy of iron-bearing rocks and soils.
• Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) – close-up analysis of the abundances of elements that make up rocks and soils.
• Magnets – for collecting magnetic dust particles
• Microscopic Imager (MI) – obtains close-up, high-resolution images of rocks and soils.
• Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) – exposes fresh material for examination by instruments on board.

So spectrometes, Xrays, rock drilling tools and high tech cameras.......

believer;1242151 wrote:And magnets...don't forget the magnets! Yep...the latest in exploration technologies to be sure.

its fucking magic.

How much area is the rover supposed to cover?

Why don't the two of you go explain to the scientists why what they've done isn't a monumental achievement then?

I Wear Pants;1242427 wrote:Why don't the two of you go explain to the scientists why what they've done isn't a monumental achievement then?

ummm maybe because we put a man on the moon like 50 years ago and then drove a dune buggy across the moon? not only that, but we have been landing machines on mars and venus since the 70s and only lost 1 i believe. only the russians suck at this shit.

Glory Days;1242471 wrote:ummm maybe because we put a man on the moon like 50 years ago and then drove a dune buggy across the moon? not only that, but we have been landing machines on mars and venus since the 70s and only lost 1 i believe. only the russians suck at this shit.

So when every scientist says this is an achievement and that this rover is much better than any we've sent before you think "nah, you're all lying"?