I wish more people were as into the Mars landing tonight (not to mention other scientific endeavors) as they are into sports. I bet the world would be a different and better place if these things were given the same general importance as sports are given in our society. It's sad.

Live, please live, please land safely, be safe, please live, live, LIVE!!

I must have cried all the way down I was so frantic even though I TRUSTED her, the machine.
I TRUSTED her creators who had poured their very hearts into their fingertips during the design
and assembly of this beautiful jewel with its seemingly mad design.

I cried LIVE!!, I added my one tiny voice to the many thousands that shouted and cried and hurled
O SHIP!! LIVE!! to the ceilings of the skies as She traversed space and descended in many veils of fires and she lived!

Raddamant: Have you ever looked at the stars and thought about the 'big questions?' Then you realized that while we are infinitesimally small, we have made enormously gigantic leaps of knowledge and understanding of our universe, and maybe one day we'll actually have the answers? And in that instant, as you gazed upon a giant ball of gas that is incomprehensibly far away, you felt this unbelievably great sense of accomplishment for all of humanity, as if one day we truly would travel the universe in a utopian state because of the research we are doing now... hell, I don't actually know where I'm going with this, but damn it just feels good to be alive right now. Let's go exploring!

Until you realize that a mission like this was conceived, executed, and completed by the brightest among us in society. The ones who grinded hard learning math, physics, and any number of niche scientific fields that are applicable only to the amazing work they do. You know, the kind of people that are made fun of in grade school, then largely toil in obscurity as adults while society fawns over which tampon brand Kim Kardashian uses.

Galileo, Socrates, and Da Vinci proved that awesome brilliance can exist in the context of an insanely stupid species.

IOW: Most people are still morons. It's tempting to think that *maybe* one day we'll look upon work like this as more important than the petty bullshiat we concern ourselves with, but history just doesn't support it.

//Yes. Bitter.
///Still fun at parties.
////"I gave up on my species." -- George Carlin

david_gaithersburg: Yeah, $2 billion has been safely deployed to Mars.

We're spending $9 billion a month waging war in Afghanistan.

fark you.

IronTom: clear_prop: crypticsatellite: I wish more people were as into the Mars landing tonight (not to mention other scientific endeavors) as they are into sports. I bet the world would be a different and better place if these things were given the same general importance as sports are given in our society. It's sad.

Times Square tonight:

Is that for real? That would be so awesome.

Yes, for realz. It was up on the big screen in Times Square.

Link
Link

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

Come on man...for once, let's keep try and keep the stink of politics off of a Fark comment board.

I whole-heartedly agree, but sadly, you just know that within hours this will get politicized on some media outlet.

I am in awe of Nasa's achievements today, as well as those I've witnessed over my lifetime. This is what mankind should be living for, and celebrating publicly for.

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

Way to go, NASA!!!

Obama should announce a tripling of NASA's budget, paid for by offsetting cost reductions in military spending. NASA deserves it!

Some 'Splainin' To Do: Arctic Phoenix: YAY!

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

I'll believe in the viability of a Mars colony once we successfully colonize Antarctica. Let's do the one that would be about 1000x easier, first, then we can talk about Mars.

It's done. A long time ago. There are great big buildings right at the pole itself, and various towns and research stations all over the continent.

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.



"Ixnay on alkingtay about the ecrets anplay, monkeyboy!"

atomicpile: I still can't get over the fact that pictures were taken by a rover roughly 34 million miles away, relayed through another satellite and a series of antenna arrays, and I can ALREADY LOAD THEM ON MY HOME COMPUTER LESS THAN 30 MINUTES LATER.

I felt the same way when I saw pictures from the surface of motherfarking Titan pop up on an FTP server for me to examine, and internet people had, within hours, combined them into a collage that depicted this mysterious surface of Saturn's moon from the air. Looks like a network of river channels and a methane lake in this picture. Bloody amazing stuff, seriously.

crypticsatellite: I wish more people were as into the Mars landing tonight (not to mention other scientific endeavors) as they are into sports. I bet the world would be a different and better place if these things were given the same general importance as sports are given in our society. It's sad.

Times Square tonight:

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!

bbfreak: Cost of war in Iraq $805 billion and counting

Imagine if we had put all that money in an endowment and given the interest every year to NASA for manned space exploration?

ChiliBoots: dittybopper: The Vikings had RTG power supplies; even if they're dead, they're still warm. They gotta be dead and cold before it counts as necrophilia.

Viking 2 was explicitly turned off by ground control due to a battery failure. Viking 1 lost contact with Earth when the antenna pointing software was over-written by mistake.

You can't stop radioactive decay with a software command; although I'm sure some customer, somewhere has requested it from some hapless firmware group:-)

The Vikings has RTGs for power, and rechargeable batteries to "smooth out" the demand. Certain things would require a bit more "juice" than the RTGs could provide, or at least put enough of a strain on the system that there would be a voltage drop, so the batteries were there to provide surge capacity: During times of low electrical usage, the batteries would be charged up by the always working RTGs, and when more power was needed than the RTGs alone could provide, the batteries would be (partially) discharged.

You can't stop radioactive decay by software command, but you can shut off everything else on the spacecraft that way with a simple command. Each lander had 2 RTGs putting out 30 watts of power, for a total of 60 watts. Those RTGs are probably still putting out something like 45 watts total, so assuming you could run at least parts of the spacecraft with that, you could in theory "wake them up", and it's remotely possible, though unlikely, that Viking 1 is still "alive" but unable to report back because the antenna is pointing in the wrong direction (though I assume we would have gotten something from the low-gain omnidirectional antenna).

Some 'Splainin' To Do: Arctic Phoenix: YAY!

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

I'll believe in the viability of a Mars colony once we successfully colonize Antarctica. Let's do the one that would be about 1000x easier, first, then we can talk about Mars.

The main reason Antarctica HASN'T been parceled up into a mess of colonies at this point is because there's actually an international treaty to set colonial claims to Antarctica aside and to not shiat it up and to use colonisation primarily for scientific research.

Yes, you're reading it right--Antarctica was pretty much set aside as a scientific colony for all of mankind because we'd seen how we had beshat all the rest of the wild, undeveloped places in the world once countries started making territorial claims...and, for once, decided "No, we're not going to go for a friggin' land rush for once, let's use this place for scientific study and try not to fark things up this time".

And this was done all the way the hell back in 1959--when humans were just figuring out that "send little beeping boxes full of vacuum tubes into space with high explosive technology liberated from the German V-rocket program" thing; we were still figuring out how to send living critters up and not KILL them before they ended up in space. It went into full effect in 1961, when the US and USSR had finally figured out how to send live humans into space and get them back home safe and sound.

(To give a perspective--something like seven countries had claims on various slices of Antarctica beforehand, some of which overlapped, some of which are potential trigger-points (the conflicting territorial claims between the UK and Argentina being a biggie--for starters, the British claim was organised as an overseas territory of the FALKLAND ISLANDS, with ALL the baggage that ensues), and not all of which were recognised by others--the US didn't recognise any of the Antarctic territorial claims, for one. There's a nice listing of the territorial claims that got set aside

In other words...arguably the precedent for what is planned for lunar and Martian exploration. Pretty farsighted, too; I'd much rather see (for example) McMurdo as a scientific outpost, occasional tourist spot for Antarctic ocean tours, and occasional Large Mecha Anime reference than, say, a mining outpost a la the sort of thing you see in the Northwest Territories or Nunavut (where a town exists for about twenty or thirty years until the mine runs dry, then it basically gets packed out and the remains of the town site exists as a toxic ghost town).

The stuff we do in Antarctica also gives pretty good practice for when we decide to set up our own little McMurdo on the Moon or Mars, too. :3 (Not just in the range of how to do scientific research in arse-cold unforgiving temperatures; in the "how the hell humans can deal with being effectively isolated from the rest of the world save for radio contact for up to six months at a time" psychological aspect which would be a VERY important part of manned travel to the Moon or Mars.)

We well could have mined the shiat out of Antarctica at this point--instead, the world (for once) basically has set Antarctica up as a de facto international scientific park and wildlife preserve for the good of mankind. :D

WombatControl: And for the haters complaining about the cost - yeah, it's expensive. But the government outright wastes a lot more than the cost of this mission every day - and at least this time we have some cutting-edge science and engineering to show for it. NASA isn't perfect, but hard-science missions like this is what they're supposed to be doing.

Don't forget, too, that paying those people to build and launch that thing, and monitor it, drive it, support it, etc., means a lot of decent paying jobs. What would you replace that with, more handouts?

Sultan Of Herf: 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.

The Moon is *CLOSER*, but from a physics standpoint, it's really not much easier or cheaper to transport the materials and equipment. If you can put X amount of payload on the Moon, you can put nearly that much on Mars. It just takes longer to get there.

ChiliBoots: cptjeff: Ghastly: So the rover is gonna get drunk and then experiment with the Viking probe?

Wouldn't that qualify as necrophilia?

The Vikings had RTG power supplies; even if they're dead, they're still warm. They gotta be dead and cold before it counts as necrophilia.

Viking 2 was explicitly turned off by ground control due to a battery failure. Viking 1 lost contact with Earth when the antenna pointing software was over-written by mistake.

Quaker: Ricardo Klement: Quaker: So when does the terraforming start? Get on that, NASA.

Iron core is too small. No atmosphere can survive the solar winds without a bigger magnetic shield.

Venus doesn't have a magnetosphere but it still has a dense atmosphere. Solar radiation would still be a problem, but a manageable problem. And either way, who cares? It would be super cool just to try and do it.

It has an induced magnetosphere that allows heavier gasses to remain. But hydrogen? Gone. So Venus has no appreciable water left, even if it had oceans like Earth a billion years ago.

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

SPACE!!! NEATO!!!!

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

SPACE AFGHANISTAN!!! NEATO!!!!

Also, SPACE AFGHANISTAN!!! NEATO!!!!

This. 17% of my federal taxes go for defense. 16% each for Social Security, Medicare, and "Income Security" like unemployment insurance and military pensions. Science, Space and Technology combined get 1%.

I'd worry more about how to "better spend" the 65% in those four big slices of the pie, thanks.

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

SPACE!!! NEATO!!!!

We've tried that before. It was called "The 1970's". Didn't work out so well.

Also, I bet those several minutes of extreme tension followed by that moment of glorious triumph inspired more awe, goodwill, and hope for the future than all of the wars, bailouts, propping up of failing business models, and partisan bullshiat that we see on a daily basis COMBINED. I wish the politicians would take more note.

Think of what NASA could do if their budget weren't always getting gutted. :(

But, no. I won't let that get me down. Today is an awesome day and a job well done by all involved. :D :D :D

[GlaDOS] This was a triumph. I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS![/GlaDOS]

Mister Peejay: Yes, they're called "sane Christians" who believe that God created all, but don't take the book of Genesis literally.

I mean, we know a lot about the Universe, but amount we don't know is even smaller. Like, what CAUSED the Big Bang? How did the Universe even get to that state in the first place?

Hmmm... how about those who would probably say their God (Jewish or Christian or whatever) kicked off the Big Bang, but didn't specifically create a fully-formed Earth? I think there's a lot of them afoot, but they don't make noise, because they're too busy doing science and discovering pulsars and dark energy and shiat like that, and going to Nobel Prize ceremonies.

/never met Dame Bell Burnell, but the other two are good people.

atomicpile: I still can't get over the fact that pictures were taken by a rover roughly 34 million miles away, relayed through another satellite and a series of antenna arrays, and I can ALREADY LOAD THEM ON MY HOME COMPUTER LESS THAN 30 MINUTES LATER.

Living in the future is awesome, isn't it?

noazark: The new rover's official name is the Mars Science Laboratory; or MSL for short.

The "Curiosity" moniker was chosen by a 12-year-old girl who won a NASA essay contest back in 2009.

...and who, if I understood the stream this evening correctly, got to be at frickin' JPL for the landing, got interviewed on NASA TV, and so on and so forth. While all us losers had to stay in our basements or whatever.

/In a few more years, she'll be yet another science hottie.

One day, I hope to be able to set up a ham radio station on Mars. Sound stupid? The Martian ionosphere would allow long distance HF communications, similar to those on Earth, but at somewhat lower frequencies.

turboke: sendtodave: What ever happened to our good, strong American names for space exploration?

Apollo! Viking! Pioneer! Challenger!

Cornhole!

Curiosity?

Pathetic.

You do realize Apollo is a Greek god and Vikings are from Scandinavia, don't you?

This is why those are entirely appropriate American names for missions.

KrispyKritter: sincere thanks to the good people of Germany. it was the brilliant German minds that were Uncle Sam's spoils of war that gave your America a rocket and a space program. bow to your German superiors who had their glory stolen from them shameful Yankee imperialist lackeys.

O RLY? I don't think Germany had much of a rocket program in 1926.

"Don't you know about your own rocket pioneer? Dr. Goddard was ahead of us all."
-Wernher von Braun

This is the last one. Was a random shot they showed for a quick second with the camera pointed towards the Sun.

Joce678: Tickle Mittens: cmdwedge: All snark aside, you should be bloody proud, America. Seriously. Pat yourselves on the back - this is farking science.

/Aussie

Might be my country's flag, but it's our species future.

And lets not forget that some other countries were involved, too.

I do know that Australia is part and parcel with helping to collect the data feeds from out there. Not sure if they've contributed to the project in other ways, but thanks for anything you guys have pitched in for us regardless!

Representative of the unwashed masses: Read the comments on the ctvnews.ca website about the landing, the ZOMG why do this instead of feed poor people brigade are out in full force.

/bunch of pussies
//mars FARK yeah!

LOL! I wonder what they'd say if they knew their Canadian Space Agency flew a couple guys in patch-adorned flights suits to Hawaii for a week or two last month, to test a prototype rover at the "Lunar Analogue Site" on Mauna Kea.

E-Brake: RicosRoughnecks: E-Brake: We were just saying that it would've been very neat to have this happen on Primetime TV (without Bob Costas or Ryan Seacrest talking over it) so millions more could experience this feeling live. Wouldn't that be cool if this were on network TV, or at least CNN, instead of having to stream it online at 1:30am Eastern.

I watched it on CNN, pretty good coverage. Not great but good.

Ah thanks, good to know this was covered on the news network too, the more the merrier (we plopped the stream over on the TV so didn't click around and see). First we checked to see if the Science Channel would have this but alas they had some silly SyFy-type program instead. :/

It was really retarded that my only option available to even view this was to stream it over the internet. Every time the video feed lurched, I kept thinking "Don't lose the stream, don't lose the stream!" This whole thing should've been broadcast live on at least one news channel. This was high drama, even if you're not a geek-type it had to be at least exciting to see if $2 billion dollars ended up in pieces on the surface of Mars or not. They missed a great opportunity to get rare late-Sunday night ratings. Really stupid.

Internet 1, TV 0

VvonderJesus: cameroncrazy1984: VvonderJesus: Considering the cuts President Obama has made to the NASA program, he already feels it to be a waste of resources.

All that has to change. And with the strategy I'm outlining today, it will. We start by increasing NASA's budget by $6 billion over the next five years, even -- (applause) -- I want people to understand the context of this. This is happening even as we have instituted a freeze on discretionary spending and sought to make cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Go be an idiot somewhere else.

I sincerely apologize for my inaccurate statement.

Politics aside, this is a great night for scientists and for Earth.

"The problem, they say, stems from NASA trying to cram too many big-ticket items into a $17.7 billion budget"

Yep, let's blame Obama for NASA's problem.

Cassini was/is amazing, Carolyn Porco has a wonderful TED Talk on it.

I'm excited for Juno in 2016


YAY SCIENCE!

stiletto_the_wise: platedlizard: I'm amazed. First they had the space stage. then it decoupled from the satellite. Then it entered the atmosphere. Then parachutes. Then the parachutes came off and it CAME DOWN WITH A SKY CRANE. Then the rover landed and cut through the cable connecting it to the sky crane. Then the sky crane flew off! At any point something could have messed up and ruined the entire mission, but it didn't. It didn't.

The parachute deployed at MACH 1.5 or so. That alone is freaking amazing.

I'm having issues with that - mach is a unit measuring the speed of sound in our atmosphere and is highly dependent on medium and temperature. In Earth's troposphere, as you go higher in altitude, temp decreases as does speed of sound. Actual dynamic pressure at any given Mach number, as measured by indicated airspeed, is much lower at higher altitudes because the lower atmopsheric pressure therein.

So, what exactly is 1.5 Mach in the Martian atmosphere in terms of actual dynamic pressure? Or is that figure an analog to what it would experience in our atmosphere (but, again, at what combination of temperature and pressure?).

In the end, Mach - the speed of sound, is kind of a shiatty measurement for anything other than shockwaves.

Apparently I'm not going to sleep any time soon.

Does anyone know if there is any place where a plastic model of the Curiosity probe can be ordered online? I like putting together plastic models of spacecraft, and I'd love a Curiosity to put up on my shelf. I've looked around, and I can't find one anywhere.

My grandfather was an engineer on the X-15 space plane, the Apollo Program, and the Space Shuttle. He passed away a few days ago. Wish I could call him and talk about this in the morning.

Unbelievable job. Didn't think it was possible. It's unfortunate that corrupt politics and an ignorant population are harming the future of our space exploration. Fewer bombs; more space missions.

I think he just told Fox News and the Fartbongo-derengement-syndrome folks to go suck it.

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

All that has to change. And with the strategy I'm outlining today, it will. We start by increasing NASA's budget by $6 billion over the next five years, even -- (applause) -- I want people to understand the context of this. This is happening even as we have instituted a freeze on discretionary spending and sought to make cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Go be an idiot somewhere else.

steamingpile: Yet my cell phone signal sucks, what is NASA keeping from us?!

You wanna spend $1,500 a minute? I can get you DAMN FINE cell service for that.

cptjeff: Ghastly: So the rover is gonna get drunk and then experiment with the Viking probe?

Wouldn't that qualify as necrophilia?

He's very VERY curious.

Quaker: So when does the terraforming start? Get on that, NASA.

Iron core is too small. No atmosphere can survive the solar winds without a bigger magnetic shield.

Holy crap!

timujin: Hah, I get to keep my job AND I got the green! Woohoo!

Hope you don't mind, but I switched the link over to NASA's USTREAM feed.

Congratulations on getting to keep your job too. :-)

Gyrfalcon: Can we get a link that goes to the NASA feed and not a CNN newsroom? KTHXBY

Here's NASA's USTREAM feed.

Amazing.

It got really dusty in here during all of that.

I'm dancing around the room, wearing my temporary NASA badge ;)

So the rover is gonna get drunk and then experiment with the Viking probe?

I watched it live... Oh wait, that was an OK Go video.