so i'm wondering, why would they try something like plucking it out of the air with a helicopter, if it had parachutes in the first place?

Man, I miss the days when NASA used to get things right.

/ha-ha
//NASA is a great big waste of our tax dollars, people

OLD NEWS?

Newsflash? Wait, does anyone think this will lead the news on any station tonight? Maybe Wichita Kansas?

Watched it on video feed - nasty. Really makes you wonder if the farking shuttle will fly again after this.

They may also have a 'live mortar' from the failed chute.
Stay tuned.

yes, we know. See previous thread......

/wondering what the hell is wrong with fark today

Parachute and airfoil did not deploy as planned.

Y'think?

pwn3d

Ooops.

Hope it wasn't confusion over metric and standard measuring systems.

Phil Collins resumes solo career.

Watching this play out live. They're not sure whether the charge that releases the chute went off. Worst case scenario is that they've still got a live bomb on board the thing.

RaoulDuke, they wanted to be extra certain that nothing got banged-up when it hit the ground. Guess that's kinda irrelevant now. :(

bdthinker, uhm, how is this old? It only happend a matter of MINUTES ago...

BWAAA hahahahaha!!!!

So, Mr. Bush, when exactly were we planning on the Mars landing again..?

pics?

ITS A TRAP!

Live explosives on the pod.

Bomb squad being called to deal with it.

/tinfoil hats for decades to come now...

Why doesn't this surprise me?

that was my laugh of the day

fnord

man....that's a once in a lifetime tag line...kudos

That's a damned shame.

I hope Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks are OK.

" they wanted to be extra certain that nothing got banged-up when it hit the ground. Guess that's kinda irrelevant now. :("

yep, i would say so....

Hahahahah!
Anyone fancy being on the next shuttle flight?

so i'm wondering, why would they try something like plucking it out of the air with a helicopter, if it had parachutes in the first place?

Because it had data that would be destroyed the instant it touched the ground, so they had to take it out of mid-air. This sucks. There were some scientists who were really, really excited to get this info. I'd hate to bank my career on NASA figuring out how to deploy a parachute.

AAAAAAaaaaaaauuuuuuuuugh!!!! Dammit!

I'd hate to be the guy that was supposed to catch the thing.

It's a setback, to be sure, but I look forward to the future with hope.

...Just throwing it all away, throwing it all away-ay....

You gotta get in to get out.

Ugh. I watched it live on NASA TV and my stomach just sunk as it tumbled into a final impact into the dirt. Three years of science nullified. Nice work on the parachute design boys.

This kinda sucks- there was probably a lot of cool info on board.

What a farking disappointment. We've been reading about this damn thing for weeks, and it crashes.

I, for one, welcome our Andromedan overlords.

Parachutes AND helicopter pick-up were part of the plan because the instrumentation for collecting the solar wind atoms was EXTREMELY delicate. The helicopter pilots were actually movie stunt men who were capable of plucking this thing outta the air.

/shaking head. All is lost.

Note to self: The space thingy that does something crashed today, whatever the hell that is.

Cost of space probe: 500 million dollars.

Cost of labor and mission time: 300 million dollars.

Watching an expensive piece of hardware crash, with the tagline 'Optimized 9 Series Experience' from Microsoft flashing along the bottom: Priceless.

didn't the probe from the Andromeda Strain crash in Utah too? They're gonna arrive on the scene and find a drunk and a crying baby and things are going to get crazy really quick.

CarbonScoring
Newsflash? Wait, does anyone think this will lead the news on any station tonight? Maybe Wichita Kansas?

i was just in a gas station getting a sandwich at the attached mr sub (roast beef with hot peppers and wasabi dressing on wheat) and saw this on CNN. they were making it sound very important but i didn't hear what they were talking about at first, just saw the crater with the flying saucer shaped thing in it.

i thought the invaders had finally landed.

needless to say, my sub was tasty.

At least when NASA screws up, they do it big.

No halfway for those guys.

What a cornpone idea, though.....Hollywood stunt pilots....

I mean, c'mon, we're better than this. This is Russian space program type stuff.

2004-09-08 12:22:03 PM stebain [TotalFark]

You gotta get in to get out.

Are you, by any chance, at the bottom of a staircase that spirals out of sight?

The real question is, what kind of crazy, evil space molecules did we just seed the desert with?