We love Mars

[Basstrap]

tomorrow, if all goes well, the new NASA robot will be crawling along the surface of Mars.

I love this kind of stuff, but is it right to spend 800,000,000 dollars on something like this?

personally, I love it. It's an inbred human desire to explore...and the future of the human race will one day depend on it.

or maybe I've watched too many movies

 

[Dreadsox]

I just hope they remembered which calculations they are using....if I remember correctly....last time they forgot that they used feet and thought they were using meters crashing the rover into the ground.

A lot of money to spend...but I love it too. I teach robotics and programming to 8-10year olds. We are pumped up about this.

 

[BVS]

A friend of mine's wife is working on this project. If it lands properly she has to spend at least the next nine months in California only seeing her husband 6 days of the month. It sucks for them, but it's quite intriguing.

 

[Bunbury]

When is this country going to get serious about space travel??
Lets work on propolusion for serious deep space travel!!
I want it to happen in my lifetime

 

[Basstrap]

When is this country going to get serious about space travel??
Lets work on propolusion for serious deep space travel!!
I want it to happen in my lifetime

I know...

it's probably silly of me, but I'm already jealous of my kids and the future generations.
I wanna be around when space travel becomes accessible, when we live on other planets...when we discover water

I wish I was only being born today. Sure the world is becoming a dangerous place, but there are so many exiting times ahead

of course, I hope to be around for another 50 years, so I'll still get to see some exiting things

 

[bayernfc]

This sure is exciting.... Hope they don't make any mistakes this time around!

 

[BVS]

When is this country going to get serious about space travel??
Lets work on propolusion for serious deep space travel!!
I want it to happen in my lifetime

Why so we can screw up other planets? Let's get our home in order before we venture out.

 

[melon]

The chances of "deep space travel" are slim, IMO. Not only are we far from being able to travel at the speed of light, but, even if we approached it, most of space would still be out-of-reach. The nearest star is something like four light years away--hence, even if we made it to the speed of light, it would take four years to get there. If Einstein is any guide, it is theoretically impossible to ever reach it; just as it is impossible to ever hit absolute zero, no matter how close we have come to it.

Of course, nothing says that scientific laws are written in stone.

Melon

 

[Bunbury]

Why so we can screw up other planets? Let's get our home in order before we venture out.

Problems are never ending, that is what's makes life interesting. So doubtful anything in our civilization will ever be in "order."
But we can progress, like space travel!!

I hear NASA is working on ion propulsion (don't know specifics ) Supposedly is new technology that might help us to travel to nearby planets, not the answer for deep space travel but it's a start

 

[Salome]

considering the state of the world right now I think this money + the labout of - no doubt - some of the most intelligent people on this planet probably could have been spent in a better way

doesn't really help that I'm not interested in dust on Mars etc

 

[FizzingWhizzbees]

What Salome said.

Sorry guys, but I can think of a thousand better uses of that amount of money.

 

[nbcrusader]

We will always have "better uses" for the money. There were "better uses" during the 60's - yet we went to the moon.

The pictures alone from Mars will spark the imagination, curiosity and scientific interest of children everywhere. To me, that is a better use of the money.

 

[Dreadsox]

I cannot wait for school tomorrow!!!!!

 

[FizzingWhizzbees]

I think it's great that these pictures will spark intellectual curiosity.

I still think that providing clean water for every one of the six billion people on this planet would have been a better use of the money.

It's just an opinion.

 

[Bunbury]

We cannot slow down technological advances because there are some other things in the world that aren't right.
That just doesn't make sense, of course, we should do what we can to help the hungry and the disadvantaged, but not to the sacrifice of technological advances just isn't very rational

 

[BVS]

We cannot slow down technological advances because there are some other things in the world that aren't right.
That just doesn't make sense, of course, we should do what we can to help the hungry and the disadvantaged, but not to the sacrifice of technological advances just isn't very rational

But technological advances aren't at a standstill here. Why not research the technological advances in hydrogen fueled cars? There's many things here on earth we need to figure out.

It's not about slowing down advances, it's about priorities.

 

[Salome]

We will always have "better uses" for the money. There were "better uses" during the 60's - yet we went to the moon.

The pictures alone from Mars will spark the imagination, curiosity and scientific interest of children everywhere. To me, that is a better use of the money.

it's not that I don't recognize the merrits of this
but I do believe some of the worlds problems (some, not all) can be solved by money
and I would be inclined to try and solve some of these problems first
as FizzingWhizz pointed out; indeed a matter of opinion

It's not about slowing down advances, it's about priorities.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

You can see pictures here

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

 

[DaveC]

They showed an animation on TV today as to how it landed, with the airbags.

It was the funniest thing I've seen on TV in a long long time.

 

[ABEL]

i didn't see this thread till now cuz i rarely venture into FYM.
i mars and anything related to space and astronomy too!

i've been following the mission pretty closely, and even catching some of the nasa daily updates on cnn or c-span.

i got to meet one of the propulsion scientists for this mission back in the summer he came to our local astronomy club meeting and was a guest speaker. i'm a member of one of the astronomy clubs here in dallas. (i even volunteer at the local planetarium and run the star projector )

when i grow up i want to work for nasa

my absolute dream job would be to be an artist for nasa.


i'm only slightly jealous that just last year i found out that one of my cousins and her husband both work for nasa's jet propulsion laboratory (JPL). but they don't have anything to do with the mars missions.

When is this country going to get serious about space travel??

AMEN!

There's many things here on earth we need to figure out.

should we spend this much money on space exploration? absolutely! don't even get me started there, lol.

do you know how many things here on earth that have been improved because of nasa and space exploration? everything from things we use in daily life and take for granted, to medical advances that save lives. i found this list a while ago when I was debating this very conversation with a friend. it?s too long to copy and paste everything, so here?s the link?

http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html

 

[ABEL]

They showed an animation on TV today as to how it landed, with the airbags.

It was the funniest thing I've seen on TV in a long long time.

i that animation.

the propulsion scientist who came and spoke to our group last summer showed it to us.

it's also on the nasa mars mission website. they have it on the nasa mars website in the multi media section, but it says it's been temporarily removed. it's worth watching if you haven't seen it.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/video/

 

[nbcrusader]

Why do the new color pictures of the surface of Mars look a lot like Iraq?

 

[ABEL]

lol nbc.


i also forgot to mention, that mars may have been very much like earth in the past. therefore by exploring it we may find clues as to what may happen to our own planet.

 

[najeena]

I'll just keep watching Star Trek.