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#1 Re: Unmanned probes » MOC Continued » 2005-07-16 13:51:59

If a meteor split in two sometime right before it hit the ground, the halves would strike nearly simultaneously and be just far enough apart to make this sort of structure.  The two ejecta spurts (and bisecting ridge) would be caused by the two fountains of debris interfering with each other and just falling to the ground.

Interesting formation, though, weird that there aren't more of these..

#3 Re: Unmanned probes » Sell Mars to the Public - PR needs more priority in site selection » 2005-06-25 16:55:50

I agree.  I believe that a key problem currently is that such places are much more dangerous areas to land than nice flat plains.  I imagine that as time passes we will create more intelligent vehicles that can examine their landing site as they approach and find a good spot to land, as well as simply being more amenable to trickier spots.

It's possible, too, that humans will reach Mars before any probes are rigorous enough to land anywhere rough, and then they can just walk over and take pictures themselves.  smile

#4 Re: Unmanned probes » Interstellar Probes » 2005-05-20 21:24:38

Yeah, I found it interesting to see what they came up with, but a few of their beasties were simply 'let's make things really huge'.  And I'd rather that the probes met intelligent life than that they were crushed.. and I'm not sure if methane-bagged creatures could ever really survive, unless it was in a largely oxygen-free atmosphere.  Still, they did come up with a lot of stuff that I don't know I could have.

Alien Planet was infinitely more interesting than virtually everything else on TV, regardless..

#5 Re: Unmanned probes » Interstellar Probes » 2005-05-17 18:06:02

I think what you say is true, our technology just isn't advanced enough to make a good enough Centauri probe right now.  I don't know how feasible the 'probe builds itself in space' idea is, but hey, whatever works is fine by me.

I'd like to see a probe get up to .25C (or hey, even .1C) just to see how everything looks.. flying to Alpha Centauri would be a bonus.  I have a feeling Alpha Centauri will be interesting, though, when we finally do get there one way or another.

#6 Re: Unmanned probes » New Horizons - mission to Pluto and the Kupier belt » 2005-05-15 22:22:54

People against nuclear-powered spacecraft are probably of the mind that any use of nuclear power is bad.  Still, I wonder just how informed they really are.. the amount of nuclear material in a probe is puny, and it's so well-protected that I doubt it could ever do any serious harm.

I suspect that these sorts of people are ultimately frightened of everything.  They'd be happy if we all sat around and picked bugs off of each other all day, except that we might accidentally get scratched, so probably better if we all were big fat blobs that didn't actually do anything.  Wouldn't that just be sooooooo much better?

#7 Re: Unmanned probes » Voyager - Interstellar mission » 2005-04-23 21:52:37

I fail to see how the idea of extending Voyager's mission is not an idea.

#8 Re: Unmanned probes » Voyager - Interstellar mission » 2005-04-22 18:58:42

Oh.  Well then your quote is meaningless and you should remove it from your signature.

#9 Re: Unmanned probes » Voyager - Interstellar mission » 2005-04-21 18:20:12

Clarke's quote applies to all ideas, ever.

#10 Re: Unmanned probes » Voyager - Interstellar mission » 2005-04-20 18:01:36

As a certain popular science fiction writer once said:

New ideas pass through three periods:
*It can't be done.
*It probably can be done, but its not worth doing.
*I knew it was a good idea all along !


So too it is with the idea of keeping Voyager running.

#11 Re: Unmanned probes » Voyager - Interstellar mission » 2005-04-18 18:04:39

I believe that even if the monitoring of all our currently far-flung probes is cancelled, someone somewhere will train a receiver on them and record the data.  $10 million a year seems steep for such a simple task, I must admit..

#12 Re: Unmanned probes » Voyager - Interstellar mission » 2005-04-17 15:22:28

A very popular author once said..

New ideas pass through three periods:
*It can't be done.
*It probably can be done, but its not worth doing.
*I knew it was a good idea all along !


So it is with continuing Voyager's mission.

#13 Re: Unmanned probes » Where Do You Stand? - Decision time is now about the future » 2005-04-14 18:47:45

Good question.

To me, the Voyager spacecraft is important because it is one of the most distant man-made objects ever (if not the most distant..  I don't know offhand) and still moving further away, it's still returning data, and nobody really knows what happens at the edge of our solar system.

I don't understand why it costs even $10 million a year to keep monitoring it, but that still seems like a small price to pay.  It seems like a waste to just stop looking at the data.

Both Voyager and that other probe (Pioneer?) also seem to be experiencing more gravity than they 'should' be..  Surely that's interesting enough to warrant $10 million a year.  You know, gravity, one of the fundamental forces that makes the entire universe work (as far as we can tell)?  I'll cough up the $10 million myself.  Big deal.

If Voyager were to be canceled, though, I wonder if someone else could simply monitor the data.  Would it require extremely expensive equipment, or would it be easy for some university or similarly scientifically-minded body to do?  How often does that rickety bucket of bolts even return anything?

#14 Re: Unmanned probes » Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) » 2005-03-16 22:57:47

The Hubble and the rovers are completely different missions.

#15 Re: Unmanned probes » Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) » 2005-03-16 07:39:46

As long as any single instrument still works, I bet NASA will still fund the rover(s)..  The worst would be if all the cameras fail, since the rover would no longer be able to rove, but were the cameras to fail, it also means that there would be far less data to process and far less to command the rover to do.  If the rovers are somehow unable to move but the cameras still work, it's a simple matter of downloading whatever images they take daily and putting them somewhere.  I have to think that planning where to direct the rover to go takes the most amount of manpower.

In short, I wager that NASA won't stop monitoring the rovers until they are clearly dead.  They're just returning too much data on a regular basis, and when instruments do inevitably fail, NASA will simply need fewer people on the mission.

#16 Re: Unmanned probes » Cassini-Huygens III - Continued from previous » 2005-03-12 22:54:13

It seems to be natural for people to want to humanize everything..  Personally though I don't think Saturn is a he or a she, it's a huge planet that is mind-bogglingly beautiful, implausibly so.  Spirit and Opportunity are 'it's, and so are the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, my left foot..

Ultimately it doesn't make a whole lot of difference, but  regardless the whole assignment of genders to things will always perplex me.  I'll be more than willing to agree that non-living things have genders once they engage in sexual intercourse and reproduce..  and I'll bet you $400 trillion that will never happen.

#18 Re: Unmanned probes » String-of-Pearls Jupiter Probe - Would this Work » 2005-03-11 16:22:40

People are constantly finding new materials and new methods of manufacturing.  I'm sure someday we'll have some way of getting a probe into the deepest depths of Jupiter.  I imagine we'll all be dead before that happens, but you can't have everything, I suppose.  smile

#19 Re: Unmanned probes » String-of-Pearls Jupiter Probe - Would this Work » 2005-03-10 23:18:12

I imagine that if we were to somehow devise a probe that could go all the way down to Jupiter's core (or whatever is down there) we'd see some very interesting things indeed.  It's only a matter of time before such a mission is planned and executed, but I wouldn't mind if one took off tomorrow.  smile

Wouldn't any probe be crushed and/or melted long before it got anywhere near Jupiter's core? If so, then unless somebody invented something like the semi-magical "Unobtainium" metal used for the mole vehicle in the movie "The Core" it will probably be quite a while before any probe gets even a fraction of the way to Jupiter's core.  smile

Note carefully the first words of my first sentence. 

..."if" we were to "somehow"...

#20 Re: Unmanned probes » String-of-Pearls Jupiter Probe - Would this Work » 2005-03-10 17:44:16

I imagine that if we were to somehow devise a probe that could go all the way down to Jupiter's core (or whatever is down there) we'd see some very interesting things indeed.  It's only a matter of time before such a mission is planned and executed, but I wouldn't mind if one took off tomorrow.  smile  Oh, and I guess I'd settle for halfway down, or even just two or three thousand miles..  but there has to be unimaginable stuff down there.  Even, dare I say it, life.

#21 Re: Unmanned probes » Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) » 2005-03-10 05:46:19

It's hard to believe that Hoagland isn't merely trying to drum up money when he's adamantly stated time and time again that the moon is surrounded by a 'crystal cathedral', which the Apollo landers weaved their way through as they touched down on the surface and then again on the way back up.  And oh yeah, NASA is hiding this amazing revelation because of uh, some reason, or another, and he has only three or four over-processed photographs as 'proof'.

It's possible that he's merely completely insane, but I must admit I am more cynical and that I lean towards the 'let's get the truly insane people to send me money' explanation..  I suppose it's possible that his impossible claims have inspired peoples' imaginations, and maybe that offsets whatever harm he's done to those who do try to put forth more plausible but still unpopular theories, but personally the guy strikes me as a complete fraud and I wouldn't mind if he got hit a bus and died instantly.

But yeah, Spirit and Opportunity..  smile

#22 Re: Unmanned probes » Voyager - Interstellar mission » 2005-03-10 05:39:55

Aw.  How much money does it really cost to check the transmissions from Voyager periodically?  Not much, I wager.

#23 Re: Unmanned probes » Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) » 2005-03-09 16:27:20

A whole generation has grown up thinking Mars is lurid red with an ominous-looking ruddy pink sky .. alien and forbidding. Check out the scenery in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, "Total Recall" - it's colours are completely ridiculous but they're now part of the popular visualization of Mars. This misrepresentation, although unintentional and connected with the use of infra-red filters standing in for red filters etc., is unfortunate.
    Many of us here have mourned the lack of sufficient public interest in human Mars exploration. That lack of a sufficiently large groundswell of popular support allows politicians the luxury of effectively ignoring crewed expeditions to Mars; allowing them to postone such trips until decades in the future. They get to pass the buck on to future politicians and feed us platitudes rather than action.
    I believe the fact that Mars is portrayed as so alien and uninviting in appearance contributes to the feeling that looking for a new world to colonize is futile - that Mars is just too "different" ever to be a new Earth. For this reason I think, images closer to the reality which would be perceived by a human observer on the planet's surface should be given a higher priority - if only for PR purposes.

Mars is much different from Earth, though.  Clearly, people can live on Mars, but they won't be walking around with just a shirt and pants on and admiring the flowers and butterflies..  at least not for a while.  smile

The best part of Total Recall (besides CONSIDAH DIS A DIV-AHS) is the eyes bugging out when Arnie and his gal pal are laying around on the surface of Mars.  Oh yeah, and Quatto, that guy who lived in the other guy's belly.

#25 Re: Unmanned probes » Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) » 2005-03-09 00:23:26

I'm not sure we'll know what color the sky on Mars really is until we land humans on the surface..  that said, the sky definitely looks blue in some color images.  Does it really matter what color the sky is, though, in the end?  Purple might be nice.

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