Mars Unmanned Lab, Curiosity

[roasted]

Originally Posted by Yggdrasil

It's powered by a nuclear reactor, lol. The mechanical parts of the rover are going to fall apart long before it runs out of power.

I know its a nuclear battery, but the lifespan is still pretty short (the mission length is only like 23 months). With Spirit and Opportunity we projected the mechanics would break long before they actually did.

My point is, it would be a shame if we ran out of battery power before the wheels fell off.

[crazzyass]

Originally Posted by Mai'q the liar

You should be excited to live in a time where we can stream live video from mars. To live in a world where we can send a fucking unmanned research station into the stars, and accurately land it on a pebble. You should be excited about all the new stuff this thing will teach us.

Curiosity is really a great achievment to all mankind. And we should all be thrilled to live in such an age.

It's honestly mindblowing to me.

Anyone know exactly what this thing is capable of researching?

It's looking for the basic building blocks of life. Nitrogen, Oxygen, etc.

[roasted]

Originally Posted by Mai'q the liar

Anyone know exactly what this thing is capable of researching?

Tons of shit. Mostly geological stuff. There are some environmental sensors (ie radiation, atmosphere), but its mostly about geology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosi...er_instruments


One of the cool features is a laser that can burn rocks 7 meters away

These are the scientific mission goals:

To contribute to these goals, the Curiosity rover has six main scientific objectives:[12][13]

Determine the mineralogical composition of the Martian surface and near-surface geological materials.
Attempt to detect chemical building blocks of life (biosignatures).
Interpret the processes that have formed and modified rocks and soils.
Assess long-timescale (i.e., 4-billion-year) Martian atmospheric evolution processes.
Determine present state, distribution, and cycling of water and carbon dioxide.
Characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation, including galactic radiation, cosmic radiation, solar proton events and secondary neutrons.

[Pee Vee Proots, M.D.]

Originally Posted by Mai'q the liar

You should be excited to live in a time where we can stream live video from mars. To live in a world where we can send a fucking unmanned research station into the stars, and accurately land it on a pebble. You should be excited about all the new stuff this thing will teach us.

Curiosity is really a great achievment to all mankind. And we should all be thrilled to live in such an age.

It's honestly mindblowing to me.

Anyone know exactly what this thing is capable of researching?

"CURIOUSITY IS AMAZING GUYS, IT'S GOING TO TEACH US ALL KINDS OF NEW STUFF.

So does anyone know what this thing is actually capable of doing?"

This is the problem with people these days. You're excited about the data being collected, yet you don't even know if it's likely to find anything relevant or for that matter what it's even capable of looking for. Same shit with the Higgs boson. You don't understand what's going on at all, but you'll be damned if that's gonna stop you from talking about how important it all is.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's cool and it's a testament to human achievement - putting anything on another planet is brilliant and this is the biggest thing we've put on Mars yet. When humanity is gone, there will be rovers on Mars like the pyramids remained of Egypt. In that sense it's wonderful and I fully agree with you there.

But you're a layman. You aren't going to benefit from this in any way other than "look at the cool pictures" and pretending otherwise, like you have some kind of insight into the scientific benefits this will lead to is stupid (protip: it might find fuck all of importance and that is a very real possibility). It's movement, but you don't know whether it's one small step or giant leap so stop acting like it's a giant leap.

We've landed stuff on that "pebble" before. Doing it again, but bigger doesn't mean shit.

[p6867]

Any step that gets me closer to my progeny colonizing new worlds is good enough for me bro.

And while i'm not an expert by any means, that doesn't mean i don't know a lot about this project.

[Pee Vee Proots, M.D.]

Originally Posted by p6867

Any step that gets me closer to my progeny colonizing new worlds is good enough for me bro.

And while i'm not an expert by any means, that doesn't mean i don't know a lot about this project.

It'll be a very small step in that direction if one is made at all. I know a bit about Mars too, but I'm not going to delude myself into acting like knowledge of Martian geology is about to rock my world.

[General Butt.Naked]

Originally Posted by Haiti's Space Agency

there are live feeds of viddeo from it??? where

Was on here for a while

http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl

[13579]

This is real? I only heard of it the other day, assumed it was some fake bullshit as something this cool should be everywhere.

[General Butt.Naked]

I actually went home to watch it n caught my mom crying a bit. My grandfather was one of the head engineers for NASA for a lot of years. He dedicated most of his life tpo figuring out how to put men in space, and eventually they did. People right now take it for granted just because most of us...for as long as we've been alive, have known that space travel is possible. Its hard to remember that it wasnt always like that. How impossible it mustve seemed for people before- to look up at the night sky, at the moon that for all of human history has hung just beyond reach- and to believe that you could get there. Even outside of the space program, it changed peoples lives the world over because it meant that you dont know whats really impossible until you try.

The space program means a lot of things to a lot of people....mostly to those who remember what life was like before we knew what we could do. Its important for a lot of reasons though. Even superficially, neil degrasse tyson talked about how much more together and ingenuitive we were as a people during the early "age of exploration". Even if this never led to anything more than data, at least it. Keeps up on our toes and investing energy in new technology rather than product development, etc. Because that is whe most of the engineers go when theyre not working on something like this....most of them are actually pooled to go help build some new, long range missile system or other militar tech.

And mass effect would definitely be a ways off, but imagine if this year was what they mention when they start talking about the infant years of space colonization?ntime moves so slow for us because e live such short lives, so w dont see how quckly everythng really progresses. When you look at the kind of technology we have compared to fifty years ago....its massive leaps ahead. Imagine where we could be fifty more years...a hundred years....a thousand years from now? I mean even now, weve sent our machines hundreds o f millions of miles into space, unlocked the human genome, and we can GROW organs, or fit people with prosthetic ones....some of which even improve natural human physiology. Its just insane. And this iss nothing.

So yeah if you ever doubt the necessity of a robust space program, take the opportunity to speak to someone who was there at the beginning .

[Haiti's Space Agency]

Originally Posted by General Butt.Naked

Was on here for a while

http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl

i was watching from the nasa.gov site and it was just all the command people clapping when something went right then they ate a bunch of peanuts and clapped even more at thumbnails

[bortmackie]

"WE GOT THUMBNAILS!!" i loled at that part. i actually watched it on a big tv cuz i get the nasa channel, which never has anything interesting on ever.

So i found out (from reddit blah blah blah) that the russians sent rovers to Venus, which i found pretty amazing cuz i never knew that happened. They only lasted like an hour before succumbing to pressure/heat but they snapped a bunch of pictures, and they sent a whole bunch of them. cool shit

[p6867]

Originally Posted by Pee Vee Proots, M.D.

It'll be a very small step in that direction if one is made at all. I know a bit about Mars too, but I'm not going to delude myself into acting like knowledge of Martian geology is about to rock my world.

space exploration is the biggest step step in that direction.

[Pee Vee Proots, M.D.]

Originally Posted by p6867

space exploration is the biggest step step in that direction.

Curiosity might not find anything new that is particularly relevant to colonization. Just "exploring space" is not a step towards anything but exploring space better.

[Rust]

Originally Posted by Pee Vee Proots, M.D.

Curiosity might not find anything new that is particularly relevant to colonization.

It already did. Curiosity, and the ship that brought it to Mars, is outfitted with sensors to measure the amount of radiation it receives. Scientists now have a picture of the level of radiation astronauts would receive on a trip to Mars, and will have data on the level of radiation they will receive once on Mars.

That's one of the biggest obstacles in colonization.

[Pee Vee Proots, M.D.]

Originally Posted by Rust

It already did. Curiosity, and the ship that brought it to Mars, is outfitted with sensors to measure the amount of radiation it receives. Scientists now have a picture of the level of radiation astronauts would receive on a trip to Mars, and will have data on the level of radiation they will receive once on Mars.

That's one of the biggest obstacles in colonization.

Fair point.

[p6867]

Originally Posted by Pee Vee Proots, M.D.

Fair point.

Even if it found nothing, if the planet somehow tested negative for every substance we tested for, 1. That would still be huge information to receive, and 2. we're not going to have a manned mission to mars before we've done a lot of research and have put a lot of rovers on the planet.

[Beef]

http://panoramas.dk/mars/greeley-haven.html

this is sweet

[Pee Vee Proots, M.D.]

Originally Posted by p6867

Even if it found nothing, if the planet somehow tested negative for every substance we tested for, 1. That would still be huge information to receive, and 2. we're not going to have a manned mission to mars before we've done a lot of research and have put a lot of rovers on the planet.

Like I said, I'm all for putting rovers on Mars. I'm all for research. I'm also all for acknowledging that the research has very little to do with me or 99.99% of humanity. A few scientists will have their theories validated or shot down - that's all that's going to come of this.

[Beef]

Originally Posted by Pee Vee Proots, M.D.

Like I said, I'm all for putting rovers on Mars. I'm all for research. I'm also all for acknowledging that the research has very little to do with me or 99.99% of humanity. A few scientists will have their theories validated or shot down - that's all that's going to come of this.

The research has nothing to do with you but its a huge boost to our economy, assuming you live in the US

[delysid]

Why is space technology so interesting??

Also, am I the only one who thinks that the soviet rockets looked way cooler than their american counterparts?
Maybe Russians think the same about american rockets because they're so used to seeing their own that the different style seems novel.

[Rust]

Originally Posted by Pee Vee Proots, M.D.

A few scientists will have their theories validated or shot down - that's all that's going to come of this.

Yeah, you can summarize 99.9% of research that simplistic way. It's the ramifications of what theories are validated or shot down, which then guides future research and development, that is important.

Just the landing itself - i.e. the 7 minutes of terror - and all that involved it is a huge step. That immediately validates a new form of landing craft in far away planets.

[roasted]

Originally Posted by delysid

Also, am I the only one who thinks that the soviet rockets looked way cooler than their american counterparts?
Maybe Russians think the same about american rockets because they're so used to seeing their own that the different style seems novel.

I think you're the only person who thinks soviet rockets are cooler. They are still using shit designed in the late 1960s.

[Pee Vee Proots, M.D.]

Originally Posted by Rust

Yeah, you can summarize 99.9% of research that simplistic way. It's the ramifications of what theories are validated or shot down, which then guides future research and development, that is important.

Just the landing itself - i.e. the 7 minutes of terror - and all that involved it is a huge step. That immediately validates a new form of landing craft in far away planets.

Ughh that "7 minutes of terror" is fucking stupid. I mean it worked, which is great, but... the video they put out prior to the landing was such sensational bullshit. The music, the attitudes and mannerisms of the people talking about it... all of it was sickeningly over the top. Like something I'd see on an episode of Ancient Aliens.

And yes, a lot of research is unimportant for most people. Are you denying this? For every major breakthrough, there are 1000 breakthroughs that we never hear about because nobody cares except the few scientists who specialize in that field. It's no different when it comes to space. You can summarize 99.9% of research realistically and simplistically like I'm doing, or you can simplistically sensationalize every new discovery like the people I'm talking about are doing.

EDIT: Actually it's worse - the people I'm talking about aren't even sensationalizing discovery, they're sensationalizing the potential for discoveries that they don't even understand.

[delysid]

Originally Posted by roasted

I think you're the only person who thinks soviet rockets are cooler. They are still using shit designed in the late 1960s.

No, I just mean the way they look.
Although Columbia/Atlantis etc was pretty cool

[delysid]

Originally Posted by Pee Vee Proots, M.D.

EDIT: Actually it's worse - the people I'm talking about aren't even sensationalizing discovery, they're sensationalizing the potential for discoveries that they don't even understand.

Yes, welcome to the world of media.
Sensationalist bullshit all around.

[Rust]

Originally Posted by Pee Vee Proots, M.D.

And yes, a lot of research is unimportant for most people. Are you denying this? For every major breakthrough, there are 1000 breakthroughs that we never hear about because nobody cares except the few scientists who specialize in that field. It's no different when it comes to space. You can summarize 99.9% of research realistically and simplistically like I'm doing, or you can simplistically sensationalize every new discovery like the people I'm talking about are doing.

EDIT: Actually it's worse - the people I'm talking about aren't even sensationalizing discovery, they're sensationalizing the potential for discoveries that they don't even understand.

Yeah, I don't even understand your point. You're complaining about people getting excited by about this because.... you think they don't understand the ramifications? So? Who gives a fuck? I'd rather have people who get excited about the right thing for the wrong reasons than the reverse.

This is a big deal. Even if we were to simplistically/ridiculously say that all this will do is validate or confirm a few theories, that's still important because huge things for the human race hinge on confirming or refuting those theories, and the data this will gather. That's what matters.

[Pee Vee Proots, M.D.]

Originally Posted by Rust

Yeah, I don't even understand your point. You're complaining about people getting excited by about this because.... you think they don't understand the ramifications? So? Who gives a fuck? I'd rather have people who get excited about the right thing for the wrong reasons than the reverse.

This is a big deal. Even if we were to simplistically/ridiculously say that all this will do is validate or confirm a few theories, that's still important. That's what matters.

I'm bitching about the degree to which people are excited. I think it's a good thing but I'm not saying shit like "i need new friends" because the ones I have aren't shitting themselves with joy over something that in all likelihood will make no impact on their lives. And validating theories is important for some, but for most theories it should not be so for laypeople.

[Rust]

Yeah, I'm not going to derail the thread over that awful point. Bye.

[The Pat-Man]

i wonder when the radiation data will come in, ive always sort of seen that as a big hurdle for manned space flight to overcome.

[Pee Vee Proots, M.D.]

Originally Posted by Rust

Yeah, you're criticizing my exuberance in regards to my religion and I'm not going to put up with that. Bye.

You take science too seriously. Why... you're almost fanatical. Do you get all excited when scientists map the functions of some arbitrary house fly gene? Not all scientific discoveries are Earth shattering. Most of the discoveries Curiosity is capable of making are about as thrilling as that. Deal with it.

Why can't you people just acknowledge it's a good thing without implying it's a great thing that we should all be in awe over. That's all I'm saying.

[Rust]

Originally Posted by The Pat-Man

i wonder when the radiation data will come in, ive always sort of seen that as a big hurdle for manned space flight to overcome.

They already have the data for the trip, and Curiosity is supposed to upload RAD data once a day. Not sure where (if) they are publishing it though.

The RAD team leader made some comments in a press conference today.

[The Pat-Man]

Originally Posted by Rust

They already have the data for the trip, and Curiosity is supposed to upload RAD data once a day. Not sure where (if) they are publishing it though.

The RAD team leader made some comments in a press conference today.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Curio...s-284859.shtml

it was apparently hit by five solar flares, not to mention ambient space radiation. wonder how theyre going to protect dudes when they go, wrap it in tinfoil?

[Rust]

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...12/02aug_rad2/

[crazzyass]

Originally Posted by Rust

Yeah, you can summarize 99.9% of research that simplistic way. It's the ramifications of what theories are validated or shot down, which then guides future research and development, that is important.

Just the landing itself - i.e. the 7 minutes of terror - and all that involved it is a huge step. That immediately validates a new form of landing craft in far away planets.

I'm still skeptical as fuck of that landing system. Convoluted as hell...not that wrapping it in bubble wrap and dropping it from orbit is any better. But still.

[The Pat-Man]

whats the danger in space, gamma rays right? alpha and beta would easily be deflected by basically tinfoil but you need some thick concrete or lead or water to block dem gammas, wonder how theyll avoid that in manned missions.

[crazzyass]

Originally Posted by The Pat-Man

whats the danger in space, gamma rays right? alpha and beta would easily be deflected by basically tinfoil but you need some thick concrete or lead or water to block dem gammas, wonder how theyll avoid that in manned missions.

'Bout 1 cm of lead reduces gamma ray intensity by half, with multiplicative properties. Shielding can be done, it can just be expensive as hell to launch into space.

[Rust]

Originally Posted by crazzyass

I'm still skeptical as fuck of that landing system. Convoluted as hell...not that wrapping it in bubble wrap and dropping it from orbit is any better. But still.

Yeah, I agree all those different stages and maneuvers are ripe for failure. But I think the weight and size of the rover and sensitivity of all the instruments made any of the simpler designs not feasible.

[p6867]

Originally Posted by Pee Vee Proots, M.D.

Ughh that "7 minutes of terror" is fucking stupid. I mean it worked, which is great, but... the video they put out prior to the landing was such sensational bullshit. The music, the attitudes and mannerisms of the people talking about it... all of it was sickeningly over the top. Like something I'd see on an episode of Ancient Aliens.

And yes, a lot of research is unimportant for most people. Are you denying this? For every major breakthrough, there are 1000 breakthroughs that we never hear about because nobody cares except the few scientists who specialize in that field. It's no different when it comes to space. You can summarize 99.9% of research realistically and simplistically like I'm doing, or you can simplistically sensationalize every new discovery like the people I'm talking about are doing.

EDIT: Actually it's worse - the people I'm talking about aren't even sensationalizing discovery, they're sensationalizing the potential for discoveries that they don't even understand.

Why don't you go be above it all somewhere else and let the rest of us enjoy this?

[Pee Vee Proots, M.D.]

Originally Posted by p6867

Why don't you go be above it all somewhere else and let the rest of us enjoy this?

'cause I like antagonizing you.

[Rust]

Originally Posted by crazzyass

I'm still skeptical as fuck of that landing system. Convoluted as hell...not that wrapping it in bubble wrap and dropping it from orbit is any better. But still.

Relevant:

http://gizmodo.com/5932811/how-nasa-...e-teams-leader