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Thread: NASA to land on Mars tomorrow...

  1. #1
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    NASA to land on Mars tomorrow...


  2. #2
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    I know I'm out of step with almost everyone but I find space exploration supremely boring.

    However, one of my classmates, who was the commander for the Antarctic station, got involved with the Mars planning. Planning for extreme conditions is what he does and they tapped him for his polar experience. He was involved with the rescue of two astronomers at the telescope down there, who got sick in the middle of the winter. He organized the rescue.

    His advice for Mars is pretty much in the title of his presentation at a conference in New Zealand - "Eat your dogs". Great guy.

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    https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-w...rover-landing/

    You’ll be able to follow along with the news from mission control on the NASA TV Public Channel, the NASA App, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. The official NASA TV stream will begin at 2:15 pm EST on Thursday, February 18.

    Here are some milestones to look for:

    At 3:38 pm, 10 minutes before entering the atmosphere, the cruise stage should separate from the shell carrying the rover.

    Perseverance is planned to enter the atmosphere at 3:48 pm, kicking off the “seven minutes of terror.”

    The heat-protected shell should then glide toward Mars for about 14 minutes before deploying a parachute and dropping its heat shield. The parachute should deploy around 3:52 pm).

    After a couple minutes of parachuting, the craft’s back shell will release Perseverance, carried by a sort of jetpack for a smooth, propelled descent. This “sky crane” will lower Perseverance on nylon tethers, detach, and fly off.

    NASA hopes to touch down at 3:55 pm and share the first image about five minutes later.
    Individual rights are protected only as long as they don't conflict with the desires of the state .

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    Thanks, IV. Interesting stuff!
    The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible - Arthur C. Clarke

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kevin View Post
    I know I'm out of step with almost everyone but I find space exploration supremely boring.

    That's cool.... Everyone has their thing. I find Politics supremely boring......

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    I hope I can watch at least some in real time
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
    "Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
    “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis

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    140 million miles away and they think it will work. It's hard to believe , I know , BUT. There must be a few people in the world just a bit smarter than me to be able to carry this off.
    Individual rights are protected only as long as they don't conflict with the desires of the state .

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    For the space nerds, the NASA app is awesome. Easiest way in the world to go ogle the eye candy. Plus they have informative captions. One of a handful of places I regularly go.

    My oldest son’s team was a quarterfinalist in the NASA 2019 RASC-AL competition (the name is way to long to type). The name of their theme was “Gateway Based Cis-Lunar Tug”. It was basically a space truck operating at one of the La Grange points which will be space depots in the future.

    http://rascal.nianet.org/wp-content/...gust-final.pdf

    Space may be boring but it is becoming an industry and it requires a lot of engineers. It was fantasy 40 years ago.
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    I don't find space missions boring at all however I do question the expenditures regarding Mars exploration. It seems we have more problems here on planet Earth that are not being dealt with.
    OPINION....a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

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    The technology discoveries that come out of trips to other planets is impressive. If not for the Apollo program we probably would not have velcro

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    Quote Originally Posted by Phillbo View Post
    The technology discoveries that come out of trips to other planets is impressive. If not for the Apollo program we probably would not have velcro
    That is completely understood. Everything that was invented was invented here before they ever took off. Maybe we could do that without spending billions of dollars just to go to a planet that in all likelihood perhaps will never be inhabitable for eons. The moon exploration for me was different
    OPINION....a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Honda View Post
    Everything that was invented was invented here before they ever took off.
    But would we of ever had a need for Velcro if not for the need produced by the weightless environment?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Honda View Post
    .... Maybe we could do that without spending billions of dollars just to go to a planet that in all likelihood perhaps will never be inhabitable for eons...
    Without baby steps we will never get off this rock!
    The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible - Arthur C. Clarke

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    Quote Originally Posted by Phillbo View Post
    But would we of ever had a need for Velcro if not for the need produced by the weightless environment?

    Sometimes we don't know we need something until it has been invented. And does it matter if we "need" something if it makes our lives better?
    The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible - Arthur C. Clarke

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    Pretty expensive way to invent stuff we don't need. Besides, Tang didn't make anyone's life better.

    I'm willing to go so far as to say the space program isn't about stuff serendipitously found along the way. It has always seemed to me to be a national vanity project. Why did we go to the moon again? Because of Sputnik, not because there was something intrinsic to going to the moon.

    But hey, go America! It IS cool to see our scientists strut their stuff.

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