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Just thought I'd report in on some tech... you know... do a little tech report on a rover that just landed on Mars using some pretty sweet technology. How 'bout that? That's sky-crane, right? Cray cray.

Been watching since 1AM - amazing stuff. I'm so glad it is successful so far.

Did it kill a cat?

So when are we going to discover ruins on Mars that uncovers the secrets to mass effect technology?

History is being made, humans have finally put a capable lab on the one solar body other than Europa which might host or have hosted carbon-based life. Things could still go wrong but NASA has validated the landing concept so they know it works reliably enough, and that is half the ballgame already when it comes to getting stuff into planetary gravity wells with atmosphere.

Watched it live on the XBox app which had a feed 30sec ahead of NASA TV on my iPad. It seems Redmond had the premium on Cupertino here.

Krogoth wrote:

So when are we going to discover ruins on Mars that uncovers the secrets to mass effect technology?

That would be classified instantly for various "Religion and Politics" related reasons.

DrDillyBar wrote:

Krogoth wrote:

So when are we going to discover ruins on Mars that uncovers the secrets to mass effect technology?

That would be classified instantly for various "Religion and Politics" related reasons.

That would be classified more like Fantasy/Speculative fiction. That and politics is what drives media and culture these days.

I am glad it landed safely. I had my doubts about the whole flying platform with a sky crane to lower Curiosity ever working.

trackerben wrote:

History is being made, humans have finally put a capable lab on the one solar body other than Europa which might host or have hosted carbon-based life.

I think there's a lot more excitement about Saturn's moon Enceladus now since it should be possible to sample its water without actually landing by doing a fly-though on one of the geysers at the pole.

cheesyking wrote:

I think there's a lot more excitement about Saturn's moon Enceladus now since it should be possible to sample its water without actually landing by doing a fly-though on one of the geysers at the pole.

That would be interesting.

Rather than what would be much like an iced-topped, watery jar of peanut butter (as chem professors would jokingly put it) we might, just mighty-might, find something like real organic peanutty fritz twirling in Enceladus's clouds. The problem facing the theorists is that we've never observed brand new organisms evolving abiogenetically from the organic hydrocarbons found in the greatest food experiment in history - the billions of jars/tins/packs of cooked-cooled-sealed packages of foodstuff. Not at any other place or containment highly exposed to sufficiently hard radiation and cyclic temperature/pressure deltas. But then, the viability of entire sectors of foodservice, distribution, hospitality, and whitegoods industries depend on these natural principles not being breached universally at all times.

Perhaps the Frankenstein surface conditions on Enceladus does the trick for primordial self-organizing molecules. From there is another matter, unless one goes with clay or silicon pathways...

I cannot wait to see what the new Mars Science Lab tells us.

I'm glad they were able to pull off a success. It was a little bittersweet to hear that this is NASA's last "flagship" project for a while. I won't speculate on if public/private/mixed funding is best (R&P) but I am just sad they don't have much left in their future planning.

Well, the JWST is still in progress, which will be cool. And JUNO and New Horizons are still en route. There are a couple of new orbiters for Mars planned. There probably won't be the huge projects there have been for a while, but there are still projects in the works....

what makes this substantially different than Rover and all the other Mars probes?

paulWTAMU wrote:

what makes this substantially different than Rover and all the other Mars probes?

This rover has a laser on it for those pesky extraterrestrials we will encounter, Pewpewpew! (Seriously though it has a laser on it to break up rocks for samples.)

Its larger and more capable to put it briefly. It was also designed to operate on Mars for 2 years vs. the 30 days Spirit and Opportunity were designed for and obviously surpassed by two orders of magnitude. It will travel further and see more and it will send back the best photos yet while it does it.

So cool!

This was fantastic to watch and further to the above poster, its the size of a small car, so it is a feat in my eyes.

I remember all the bitching and moaning over the cancellation of the shuttle program, well not everyone, I was not one, but my point is, I would rather they spend that kind of money on something like this that seems to have infinitely more potential then flying around our planet.

Leave that old world stuff for the Russians and Chinese, let us move on to bigger and better things.

credible wrote:

This was fantastic to watch and further to the above poster, its the size of a small car, so it is a feat in my eyes.

Everything they had to do to make a safe landing was incredible. Heat shield, a huge supersonic parachute, retro rockets, AND a freaking crane just to make a safe landing (and it was safe)!

I remember all the bitching and moaning over the cancellation of the shuttle program, well not everyone, I was not one, but my point is, I would rather they spend that kind of money on something like this that seems to have infinitely more potential then flying around our planet.

Leave that old world stuff for the Russians and Chinese, let us move on to bigger and better things.

This, not so much. I know explorating is cooler in a lot of ways, but I like the idea of people in space doing stuff. There is still a lot of cool stuff we can learn right there, and on top of that, we can actually bring stuff back with a good shuttle.

And on top of that, I would like to see a day where humans get to step foot on Mars, and I think that would be much easier with better human transporting vehicles.

Meadows wrote:

Did it kill a cat?

The satisfaction of a successful landing brought it back.

superjawes wrote:

credible wrote:

This was fantastic to watch and further to the above poster, its the size of a small car, so it is a feat in my eyes.

Everything they had to do to make a safe landing was incredible. Heat shield, a huge supersonic parachute, retro rockets, AND a freaking crane just to make a safe landing (and it was safe)!

I remember all the bitching and moaning over the cancellation of the shuttle program, well not everyone, I was not one, but my point is, I would rather they spend that kind of money on something like this that seems to have infinitely more potential then flying around our planet.

Leave that old world stuff for the Russians and Chinese, let us move on to bigger and better things.

This, not so much. I know explorating is cooler in a lot of ways, but I like the idea of people in space doing stuff. There is still a lot of cool stuff we can learn right there, and on top of that, we can actually bring stuff back with a good shuttle.

And on top of that, I would like to see a day where humans get to step foot on Mars, and I think that would be much easier with better human transporting vehicles.

Don't get my wrong, I love everything space related, but things being the way they are, no way they can afford to have both projects going on at the same time.

I think space exploration is coming, for humans no less, but it won't happen till man has its greatest discovery, in my mind that will be deciphering our DNA strand or genome, whatever its called,lol.

My thoughts are when we figure this out we will figure out a way to either turn on a part of our dna or turn off another part that will allow us to breathe in space.

Ya I know how it sounds, but its just a thought I have had.

credible wrote:

Don't get my wrong, I love everything space related, but things being the way they are, no way they can afford to have both projects going on at the same time.

I think space exploration is coming, for humans no less, but it won't happen till man has its greatest discovery, in my mind that will be deciphering our DNA strand or genome, whatever its called,lol.

My thoughts are when we figure this out we will figure out a way to either turn on a part of our dna or turn off another part that will allow us to breathe in space.

Ya I know how it sounds, but its just a thought I have had.

Lol, Superman...

Breathing? No. Survival in 0 atmosphere of pressure? No. Making it so that humans can be safely frozen/hibernated for long periods of time? Now THAT might be possible. It would also be great to pair that with manipulation of other organisms. Mars has little atmosphere and a lot of frozen water. It may be possible to engineer life that would survive Martian conditions, therefore seeding life elsewhere, and that is also a pretty cool prospect.

But I do understand not being able to do both programs at the moment. NASA has probes going to Jupiter, Mars, and a shiny new telescope. That's a lot of exploration power, and it should all be very cool. I would rather have not lost the space shuttle program, but I think those cool things can keep us occupied for awhile.

Anything is possible Super.......jawes:)

But I dio agree as well, there is enough going on to keep my interest alive.

I can't wait to read about all the cool sciency stuff!

http://xkcd.com/1091/