If you have any anti-science types in your circle and they start yattering about sending ‘all that money to Mars’ remind them of the fact a crushed car bale—is around $250 a ton if it were pure steel. With plastics, not so much. That’s ALL we ever send off the Earth. The money stays on earth, buying hamburgers and paying housepayments for American workers, while the new processes and materials we produce along the way create new jobs and save lives. NASA returns a dollar for every dime we spend. So it costs us NOTHING to send stuff into space. It actually pays us. Being at it constantly with the research and the testing—is good for our economy. It’s creating something out of pure thought—a lot like writing books, until you get to the printing part. And that’s the most economical creative process there is.
Curiosity rover lands 10:31 Pacific time.
by CJ | Aug 5, 2012 | Journal | 33 comments
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I watched with my friends on twitter. Mohawk guy was trending world wide for a while and has his own tumblr following now and fanart. Fandom get stuff done. We got a big laugh out of their thumbnail cheer and “you do the conversion” joke. Nerd terrarium indeed. Everyone agreed that it was going to be depressing doing whatever pixel pushing we do at work on Monday. Might as well call in sick. Ha!
Meme:
http://ballerrina.tumblr.com/post/28842232224
http://t-dagny.tumblr.com/post/28842132195/nasa-is-hip-now-background-on-the-nasa-mohawk
http://phoenixantimony.tumblr.com/post/28839165822
Fanart:
http://mattspangler.com/post/28842129063/im-on-mars-oh-hello-friends-i-made-it-i-am
http://sic-itur-ad-astra.tumblr.com/post/28841372180
Mohawk guy was interview today about becoming a rockstar during coverage of the launch. Sounds like a sweet guy and he says he hopes people know you can get into science no matter how you look. The field is wide open to everyone.
http://youtu.be/ZlsaLs5DqCo
Unless you are one of the small number fascinated by all things space, this gets about 15s of air time, then it’s on to the latest antics of some pop star. You get more air out of a catastrophe than a success, especially if it’s not ‘the first’, Curiosity having been proceeded by Viking, Pathfinder, Opportunity, Spirit… A sad commentary on current cultural values.
*preceded* The coffee obviously hasn’t taken effect yet.
I dunno. Me and my friends on twitter, all in our twenties and from as far away as Scotland, Canada, LA, Hawaii, Chicago etc, were up having a party watching it. A ton of followers who weren’t interested at first tuned in (online of course) after seeing how excited we were getting about it and they said they were glad they did when it was all over. Key moments were trending worldwide on twitter.
Don’t dismiss the young people so quickly. We don’t need something to be on CNN to be aware of it. We don’t even watch CNN anyway. CNN is stale news for old people. When I got to work today it was only the young people who knew about it, watched it, and cared. NASA doesn’t need major news outlets when they can deliver good content to millions of people commercial free. I for one am glad it was giving the PBS treatment over the commercialized NBC Olympics treatment full of advertisers and gimmicks as it would have had CNN and it’s kind got its hands on it. It was a great day for us on a number of levels.
My daughter came home From work last night reminding us that mars was being invaded again. She then proceeded to have her laptop desktop and her smart phone smoking on the topic. Mom and dad thought the landing was tonight. Sadly a day late so now we get to watch it 24hrs delayed.
What amazed me was how fast there were pictures. The communication lag is from 3 to 21 minutes depending on our relative positions, and I think I heard it’s currently 14 minutes. I wasn’t sure whether the 10:31 time was the actual landing time or the time at which the information front would reach us…
Then the pictures arrived, amazingly fast. I was expecting a long lag as they’d have to extend a boom, uncap the lens, etc, but no—there they were, aimed at the ground, but pictures.
So much change from when one of our moonwalkers whacked a balky Hasselblad camera with a hammer to try to get action out of it. Now our cellphone cameras do darned good images, and they’re drop-proof. Even astronaut-proof.
Setting down at 2-3 mph, nothing jolted—camera popping right up…
Does it strike you that the rover has a ‘face’ strongly resembling Number Five, as in Short Circuit?
And I liked Mohawk-lad, too! Bravo for NASA. I wish they’d let Champagne into the control room—but then, sticky champagne MIGHT test the keyboard buttons, if not the solid state circuits.
as the phrase goes, “full of win” !
And then to wake up at 9:30 ET, and see, with my morning coffee this: http://xkcd.com/1091/
Lol!
And there’s a photo of the descent vehicle with the caption: “The first flying saucer comes from Earth…and lands on Mars.”
Apparently they had a low-res video camera running during the descent and the video has come back–according to My Yahoo. (I don’t do video.)
The first picture they got?
https://p.twimg.com/AzoBFyfCMAA1QSH.jpg