Mars rover Daily Updates -Spirit Making Ground - Opportunity-A Beautiful Grind

NASA - JPL ^ | 2-24-2004 | NASA/JPL

[Liberty Tree Surgeon]

Given that you make the same comments on every Mars thread, perhaps everyone on this thread can acknowledge your remarks and agree to agree/disagree as they see fit, so that no more of these science threads will be hijacked by your political discussions and resulting flame fests. That way, people who want to discuss the latest pictures or data can do so, and people who want to argue about their tax dollars being wasted can look for your threads elsewhere. Sound good? Or do you believe in your right to dissent so much that you're willing to do so to the extent that you may be hardening others' views, rather than persuading anyone?

LTS

[RightWhale]

Dry them and use them as fuel in cookstoves.

[RightWhale]

am I wrong

Oil cost is the point. We're not going to run out, but cost will increase. It's not just political like it was in '76. Demand is increasing worldwide and production is barely keeping up. Gasoline has been increasing fairly steadily for the past 5 years. Will the price of gasoline ever return to $0.19 where it was when I started driving my own car?

[FireTrack]

Oil cost is the point.

Actually, supply and demand is the point. Given an alternative to current energy resources, transportation means and so forth, it's conceivable that fossil fuel prices would plummet.

As you probably know, gasoline was a byproduct of the kerosene industry in the beginning and dumped in large pits because there was no market for the stuff. Btw, did you buy that $0.19 gallon gasoline in Alabama?

[js1138]

...there is nothing we can do to stop the crash.

I think that attitudes towards atomic energy will change suddenly and dramatically when oil prices start climbing due to reduced supply. My city was once home to a project called Offshore Power. It failed after Three mile Island, but it could be ramped up in a hurry if national survival depended on it. Offshore power could produce hydrogen and electricity.

I imagine the politics of this will be treacherous, and their might be considerable pain and social upheaval, but it will happen. France is as left wing as nations get, and most of their electric energy comes from nukes.

[Phil V.]

No new microscopic images from mars so far today. I guess if you want a new view ya gotta get it yourself. For those of you with red/blue 3-d glasses here is my first successful glyph creation. It is a 3-d glyph of a portion of the grind area . . . including "the thing" - 2/3 up and near the right edge . . .

[Darksheare]

Well, you can see the artifacts of grinding.
But that doesn't explain the 'thing' there.
I have a fossil of a trilobyte that has one "one layer down" from teh exposed one.
It resembles that 'thing' there in a way, edge on.
Weird.

[js1138]

A baby glassworm?

[RightWhale]

They are going to fight nuclear power until the day they are back to roasting rabbits on a spit on their cooking fire in their cave. They want the Golden Age and don't think about the other side: the Golden Age was an age of extreme scarcity.

[skinkinthegrass]

Thx...w/o the "special" mag. glasses, the red/blues are GREAT...the grind "looks" interesting, the 2/3 thing looks like a ????..I don't know, what it looks like...a track/impression. :)

[ElkGroveDan]

Phil, you rock.

[RightWhale]

We have until 2017 at the latest and that is if everything breaks in our favor. There is nothing that can be done to stop this. We are going off the cliff as early as 2007 no matter what. It's 30 years too late to do anything about it. We can't even afford to build enough windmills and solar panels now, and that will be impossible at any price in 10 years.

[RightWhale]

That is da bomb. However, you need to get NASA to send every tax-paying family a set of red-green glasses.

[adaven]

My 4 year old daughter helped me out with this one!

How to make your own red/blue 3D glasses:
Go to your kitchen and get a peice of plastic-wrap, big enough to cover both eyes. With red and blue Crayola markers color the left-half red and the right-half blue (or cyan).

Peice of cake! And it works!! ;-)

[Phil V.]

Give credit to JPL. I found a page with easy instructions. . . .GOT PHOTOSHOP?

Make Your Own 3-D Images

[ElkGroveDan]

I have PS, and I actually have created analglyphs before. For some reason its not working for me now. When I drop in the second layer it just becomes the whole image. No color, no transparency. I must have some setting clicked wrong.

[Phil V.]

Read JPL's instructions and go through step by step. It worked for this ol' pharmer!

[Phil V.]

I'm having too much fun . . .

[FireTrack]

Great job Phil, those round radial engine looking things stand out now as well.

[FireTrack]

You had me thinking about this all evening... If memory serves me, POV mileage increases aren't going to help that much since the largest consumer of fossil fuels is industry (I could be wrong here).

Also, one of America's greatest Achilles heels is our transportation systems. We're about 30 days away from famine if something happens to our trucking industry for example.

Lastly, industry is one area were government control is easier to implement. J.C. had all new power plants required to burn coal during his administration. One was built in our area and though we're plagued with high mercury levels in our local lakes (not sure that burning coal is the cause), we have a steady mid priced supply of electricity made from coal shipped from Montana. BTW, here in Louisiana, most of our natural gas is piped to the northeast. :-)

Anyway, based on the above assumptions, I believe we need to concentrate on the industrial sector in our efforts to great long term energy stability.