I like the headline.

markie_farkie: Somehow the GOP will spin this as a waste of national resources and blame Obama.

We know any level of moon-bat trolling is allowed here but seriously give it a farking rest.
Neil deGrasse Tyson ( PHD and obama supporter ) shows you're an idiot.
Who's More Pro-Science. . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Q8UvJ1wvk
-- Neil deGrasse Tyson

Tickle Mittens SmartestFunniest 2012-08-06 09:08:51 AM


doubled99: We've got big problems here on earth. Billions of dollars could be better spent But hey...

SPACE!!! NEATO!!!!

Fundemental research solves big problems on Earth. You survived childhood, didn't lose and arm to an industrial loom, and your most pressing health concern is likely food is too easy for you to get, and in time you may contract a disease you almost certainly wouldn't have lived to acquire 100 years ago. YOU'RE WELOME!

/Nevermind the world spanning communications network which facilitates the knowing of anything as fast as a question can be constructed and was developed from the incomprehensibly esoteric, lingering physics puzzles of the 1870s .
//Some people are practically an advertisement for slavery.


"Science" has solved many problems, so any expenditure of money for anything ever is completely justified.

Poison Appleseeds

VvonderJesus: Considering the cuts President Obama has made to the NASA program, he already feels it to be a waste of resources.

Take your diarrhea to the politics tab where it belongs. This is a great night for science and for America!

Funny, you had nothing to say to the dozen or so of your fellow lib-tards that started the trolling.

// It's only wrong when the "right" does it.

doubled99: We've got big problems here on earth. Billions of dollars could be better spent But hey...

For what Curiosity cost, we could buy another seven F-22 Raptors...

OnlyM3: // It's only wrong when the "right" does it.

It's only persecution when it happens to me.

great_tigers: miss diminutive: great_tigers: Why is it a Debbie Downer? Why does our government spend 2.5 billion dollars for a flying golf cart? This is only one of the many financial problems with the USA.

Because that flying golf cart can actually inspire millions of people to become scientists, engineers and mathematicians, who form the foundation of future economies and technologies. That alone makes it worthwhile, not to mention the knowledge it will provide us to better understand our place in the cosmos. That 2.5 billion is a far better long term investment than blowing it on one more stealth bomber.

Suppose it does inspire people to join the world of science. Couldn't the 2.5 billion be used to actually assist in teaching these people? I mean honestly, 2.5 BILLION. Outside of 2 percent of people, no one will care in a week.

Congratulations, we spent 2.5 billion dollars and inspired 40 sixth graders to pay attention science class today.

And one of those 40 might be the one who finds a cure for cancer. Lack of money isn't even the problem with education in this country. Combined local, state and federal education spending is almost a trillion dollars We are number 1 in total education spending and number 1 in per student spending. Our problem is not how much we are spending but how we spend it.

Increased spending at NASA would pay off not only in science an technology but also real jobs. NASA is a government stimulus plan that would actually work.
We would have gotten more bang for our buck by spending $100 billion on NASA instead of $800 bilion in economic stimulus that went to everyting from heated swimming pools in Hawaii to socially aware puppet shows in Colorado.

And to show my bi-patisanship on this issue Republicans are to blame as equally as Dmeocrats on the short changing of NASA

NASA is one of those things that government does half way well. The sniveling about how the money can be better spent elsewhere is false because in the US the reality is that very few programs, other than NASA suffer from a shortage of money, they suffer from a shortage of proper management of the money they have. You can throw more money at education but you won't get a better education system (Washington DC school system is a prime example)but you throw more money at NASA and the possiblites are enourmous.

vodka: Does Curiosity also only have one arm? That part boggles my mind because the arm is the most important piece on the whole thing and there is no backup.

What is the sound of one arm collapsing?

VvonderJesus: In keeping with the Mayan prediction, the rover should disturb the burial grounds of the ancient alien technologies around halloween, with a full scale invasion of Earth taking place around Thanksgiving.

I'm OK with this!

hasty ambush: Increased spending at NASA would pay off not only in science an technology but also real jobs. NASA is a government stimulus plan that would actually work.
We would have gotten more bang for our buck by spending $100 billion on NASA instead of $800 bilion in economic stimulus that went to everyting from heated swimming pools in Hawaii to socially aware puppet shows in Colorado.

And to show my bi-patisanship on this issue Republicans are to blame as equally as Dmeocrats on the short changing of NASA

NASA is one of those things that government does half way well. The sniveling about how the money can be better spent elsewhere is false because in the US the reality is that very few programs, other than NASA suffer from a shortage of money, they suffer from a shortage of proper management of the money they have. You can throw more money at education but you won't get a better education system (Washington DC school system is a prime example)but you throw more money at NASA and the possiblites are enourmous.

I agree. In fifty years NASA has spent as much of the national budget as the military has spent in ONE. Kooky, innit?

CognaciousThunk: NASA TV showing a guy doing brief segments on camera, not much news in them. Guess we can wait for the pics later.

Unfortunately, I get very very basic cable. Was disgusted I couldn't find anything on tv about the landing, at least my internet connection was great for once, and was able to watch online. Went to bed this morning at 3:30, only got two hours of sleep. Expected to see coverage from the landing on national news. They finally mentioned it 15 minutes in, and then it was less than a minute long. Got to work, brought in the papers--no mention of it on the front page of the NY Times, and only a small blurb near the bottom of the Austin paper.

Apparently, the only thing that was getting it's @ss to Mars this weekend was the rover.

doubled99: We've got big problems here on earth. Billions of dollars could be better spent But hey...

SPACE!!! NEATO!!!!

Your short sighted thinking is well noted

We're driving a robotic car on Mars today. I wonder what all the smug US-hating countries accomplished today.

I hope we dont find any zerg

doubled99: We've got big problems here on earth. Billions of dollars could be better spent But hey...

SPACE!!! NEATO!!!!

Yes, let's see where else we can set our money on fire with nothing gained. Or perhaps we should have some foresight to create genuine progress with exploration and science.

Oh, wait- you probably think that stuff is stupid and boring. Good luck with all that.

DaintySavage: I hope we dont find any zerg

I'm in no rush.

God-is-a-Taco: It was amazing to see live, and so was the Higgs conference. I dream of a world where this is the stuff that humanity as a whole recognizes and respects, and not athletes.
Great job, NASA, and great job science.

Why can't we respect both?

hasty ambush: Thank you for showing once again why we can't have nice things. There is always some asshat (on the left and right)who wants to poiltize everything.

It's honest admiration for what makes America great. Nothing more, nothing less.

Not gonna apologize for it.

theurge14: God-is-a-Taco: It was amazing to see live, and so was the Higgs conference. I dream of a world where this is the stuff that humanity as a whole recognizes and respects, and not athletes.
Great job, NASA, and great job science.

Why can't we respect both?

I was gonna say the same thing.

Both are testaments to our desire to achieve more, do more, stretch ourselves. One, a celebration of the body and the other, a celebration of the mind.

It's amazing that both are going on at the same time. Inspiring.

Whenever I start thinking i'm pretty hot shiat I pull up the mars photos from the other rovers and then realize how badarse I'm not heh. Now they've put another one there that's as big as a car using a ridiculously complex flyable re-entry and two stage landing. man those guys/gals are awesome.

great job, you're an inspiration

scottapeshot: First color pictures coming in from Curiosity and... oh dear

Bwahahaha!

vodka: Does Curiosity also only have one arm? That part boggles my mind because the arm is the most important piece on the whole thing and there is no backup.

I would assume that weight considerations restricted how much stuff they could shoot up. It's probably a lot simpler and efficient to build one very robust arm rather than have two arms with duplicate machinery. With two arms you'd need more internal chassis support, power cabling, data cabling, etc. to support the other arm, and all of the software would need to be ambidextrous.

I don't know about this specific rover, but NASA is expert at building redundant systems from all of their man-rated experience. I wouldn't be surprised if the arm is designed to survive two or three failures.

Also, while the loss of the arm would be a shame, there's a ton of imaging apparatus that would allow Curiosity to perform some of it's mission without the arm.

vodka: Does Curiosity also only have one arm? That part boggles my mind because the arm is the most important piece on the whole thing and there is no backup.

Maybe you should email the engineers and demand an explanation for why they didn't think of this.

Please post the response you get.

Interesting to note that NASA's failures have typically started in the administrative offices, just like the Dept. of Education.

doubled99: We've got big problems here on earth. Billions of dollars could be better spent But hey...

SPACE!!! NEATO!!!!

One of the great things about the space program is that it doesn't really cost our government any money in the long term. Almost all of those NASA dollars go to American engineers, contractors, manufacturing firms, staff, etc. For the country as a whole, most of those 3.5 billion dollars are spent internally, so the government can be sure of getting it back eventually. In the meantime they just happen to advance science as well, and the technologies they develop are then public domain technologies for anyone to use.

It's true that we tie up those 3.5 billion dollars for a while, and it can take a long while for the US Gov. to get them all back, and it's true that we direct all the energies of those engineers to this instead of employing them in the private market where they'd be making iPhones or whatever, but most of us view this as a worthy tradeoff.

Fubini SmartestFunniest 2012-08-06 11:05:23 AM


doubled99: We've got big problems here on earth. Billions of dollars could be better spent But hey...

SPACE!!! NEATO!!!!

One of the great things about the space program is that it doesn't really cost our government any money in the long term. Almost all of those NASA dollars go to American engineers, contractors, manufacturing firms, staff, etc. For the country as a whole, most of those 3.5 billion dollars are spent internally, so the government can be sure of getting it back eventually. In the meantime they just happen to advance science as well, and the technologies they develop are then public domain technologies for anyone to use.

It's true that we tie up those 3.5 billion dollars for a while, and it can take a long while for the US Gov. to get them all back, and it's true that we direct all the energies of those engineers to this instead of employing them in the private market where they'd be making iPhones or whatever, but most of us view this as a worthy tradeoff.



Well said.
I would rather it go to feeding people, curing diseases, and finding new sources of energy than iphones, however. But I'm just a troll.

doubled99: We've got big problems here on earth. Billions of dollars could be better spent But hey...

SPACE!!! NEATO!!!!

Yeah ... we should totally be focusing our money on trickle down economics instead so that we can keep making life even more awesome for 1/100,000 of the population, while the rest of us run around in circles never really advancing because since 1980 100% of the gains in GDP went to the top 1% and up (mostly up).

Seriously, why are conservatives so freaking dense?

Is there video of the actual landing itself, or is it too soon? Or maybe they won't release it?

lohphat: Arctic Phoenix: YAY!

Now we need to get a manned team up there and set up a colony.

Well. About that.

Since Mars has a much smaller iron core than Earth, there's a very weak magnetic field and a weak van Allen belt system protecting the surface and atmosphere from radiation.

The atmosphere is being stripped away by the solar wind over time. Life on Earth wouldn't be possible if we didn't have that shield.

Thanks iron core!

Still possible to have a colony, but it would have to be a sealed environment, hardened buildings. Going outside would still require space suits.

Still think we need to do it smaller scale on the Moon first. Much closer, easier and cheaper to transport the materials and equipment to. Use it to test and refine, then make it a jumping-off point for Mars Colony.

kombat_unit: We're driving a robotic car on Mars today. I wonder what all the smug US-hating countries accomplished today.

Its been a long standing argument of mine that these kinds of achievements are some of the best foreign influence you can buy.

/The Russians may give you guns.
/The Chinese might give you money.
/But if you want to explore the universe, there's only one nation to call.

doubled99: But I'm just a troll.

You're just trying to make sure some of that sweet, sweet space-SUV money comes to the underdabridge peoples.

Oh boy. Another Tonka toy on Mars.

It's a dusty, dead wasteland. If we went there we could build some awesome stuff without wrecking anything. That's the MAIN cool thing about space... no living things are there to worry about destroying. It's a blank slate to create whatever we want but we have to GO there.

Let me know when we do something useful.

hitlersbrain: Let me know when we do something useful.

Curiosity measured radiation levels on the way to mars and will be exploring the local geology for signs of water and past life.

If you are going to NMars, how is that information NOT useful?

hitlersbrain: Let me know when we do something useful.

Tell ya what...you go first.

doubled99: We've got big problems here on earth. Billions of dollars could be better spent

Perspective

Budget of Opportunity and Spirit: $820 million

Budget of Curiosity: $2.5 billion

Mandatory Spending (Includes things like unemployment, medicare, etc. Helping poor people, etc): 2 trillion

Annual pet spending by Americans: 50 billion

Budget of London Olympics: $14.47 billion.

Cost of war in Afghanistan: $500B and counting

Cost of war in Iraq $805 billion and counting

Percentage of the total amount we spend of the total US budget on NASA: 0.6 percent

Russ1642: cptjeff: jdcgonzalez: surfingcow: TyrantII: Anyone know how far off target it was?

There was a report made during the entry that it was 262m off.

Wow. That is wayyyy off. I thought these guys were supposed to be smrt.

/Congrats, JPL and all involved
// Hell of a show tonight

Travels roughly 36 million miles, and they land it two and a half football fields away from where they wanted it. Nuts, really.

I drove all the way across Canada and managed to hit a target no bigger than a parking spot. The thing isn't shot from Earth and then left to land wherever. They do course corrections along the way and the entry itself is precicely guided to hit that target.

Lets see you hit that parking space while traveling at highway speeds. oh and right before you enter the parking lot you have to jump out of the car.. with a parachute and jetpack.. then in mid air ditch the parachute hit the jetpack untill youre hovering over the parking spot then zip line down from the jetpack while it hovers in the air on its own while still supporting your weight flailing around in the breeze.