Can’t wait for the live thread tonite.
Watch live online> http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/
That’s some kind of delivery system there. Interesting...
This may seem silly, but the landing time is part of the problem with NASA. Public relations. They are doing absolutely the coolest, most sophisticated landing in the history of the space program at 1:30am EST. It would been so easy to adjust the time at launch, in flight, etc... for the most publicity.
Next, they couldn’t build cameras (web camera size) and transmitters in the stages of the landing modules? They said they might not know for hours if they are successful. Imagine how cool it would be if they recorded and sent landing videos of the stages after the heat sink is blown away.
“The Mars rover Curiosity, on a quest for signs the Red Planet once hosted the building blocks of life”
NASA seems to be all about the search for “life”
I would think making a habitat on the moon or even Mars would be more important.
If they find microbes in rock, does it really make a difference?
When I read about everything that has to go right for that thing to land properly, the more I think about the cat that curiosity killed.
It’s for the Muslims!
Holy cow .. that is some simply amazing tech. I hope they pull it off, and why isn’t this landing being shown on live tv at a better time? Couldn’t they have chosen a different launch window to arrive when more people could view it? 130 am EST isn’t exactly going to garner a ton of viewership.
Since when does NASA do space exploration? I thought their job was to coddle the Muslims these days.
I hope it works out for them ....but I have a doubt.
I have an XBox, and NASA came out with a free game for the XBox called “Mars Rover Landing”. It uses the Kinect system to control the Curiosity through body movements. The first stage is keeping the Curiosity on the landing track during re-entry. Second, a three-stage pyro activation that blows out the parachute and seperates the heat sheild, then controlling the rockets to lower the rover to the ground.
I haven’t made it past the pyro stage. I hope that doesn’t bode ill for tonight.
Just listened to Bob Zubrin’s talk on the case for Mars. He’s been along some of these arguments since I had a subscription to Analog back in the 80s.