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Beagle's Long Silence Continues
The BBC ^
| December 27, 2003
Posted on 12/27/2003 12:58:44 AM PST by RWR8189
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To: RWR8189; vikingchick; texasflower; hoagy62; johnny7
To: Analyzing Inconsistencies
Are you again gonna contend -- completely absent any proof -- that the European Space Agency and British scientists conspired to purposely make Beagle fail?
22
posted on
12/27/2003 6:31:29 AM PST
by
Lazamataz
(I slam, you slam, we all slam, for Islam!)
To: Lazamataz
Occam's razor. Do you recall how LockMart profited from its 1999 skrew-ups regarding Mars? Meanwhile, Astrium didn't keep things simple...they complicated the design as if they quietly WANTED it to fail, but in dazzling ways that could capture taxpayers' interest.
To: Analyzing Inconsistencies
Occam's razor.Precisely.
Never assume a conspiracy when simple incompetance will explain it.
24
posted on
12/27/2003 6:40:59 AM PST
by
Lazamataz
(I slam, you slam, we all slam, for Islam!)
To: Lazamataz
I used to think that until I worked in a prosecutor's office while in law school.
To: Analyzing Inconsistencies
I used to think that until I worked in a prosecutor's office while in law school.You worked in a prosecutor's office for a while, during your schooling.
Ergo, massive conspiricies to purposefully fail abound in the space agencies of the world.
The logic astounds, boggles, shakes the mind.
26
posted on
12/27/2003 6:46:20 AM PST
by
Lazamataz
(I slam, you slam, we all slam, for Islam!)
To: Lazamataz
Well, I've also worked at NASA Headquarters.
To: Analyzing Inconsistencies
Well, I've also worked at NASA Headquarters.Ah! Therefore you have some proof of your paranoic claims......!
(waiting....)
(waiting....)
28
posted on
12/27/2003 6:52:04 AM PST
by
Lazamataz
(I slam, you slam, we all slam, for Islam!)
To: Analyzing Inconsistencies
What did Bush know and when did he know it?! :-)!
29
posted on
12/27/2003 6:52:38 AM PST
by
zzen01
To: Lazamataz
Prove that we're not dreaming right now.
Waiting...
Waiting...
YAWN.
To: RWR8189
It's time for the British to put Professor Quatermass on the job!
31
posted on
12/27/2003 7:01:40 AM PST
by
Jonah Hex
(Free Republic - the Truth Shall Make You Fret)
To: Analyzing Inconsistencies
I take it from your limp and lifeless response that not even your position as a mole/watchdog in NASA afforded you the opportunity to collect proof as to your odd claim.
However -- and once again -- your logic is impeccable.
Your argument can be distilled to:
- I have utterly no proof of my contention, even though I worked at one of the agencies, and
- You, Lazamataz, are a weenie,
- Ergo, space agencies the world over conspire to fail on purpose.
Yeah, I can see how 1) and 2) yield 3). The logic is dazzling! I am thunderstruck! Awed! AMAZED!
32
posted on
12/27/2003 7:05:28 AM PST
by
Lazamataz
(I slam, you slam, we all slam, for Islam!)
To: Lazamataz
YOU probably don't even know what happened to Boeing these past few months. Figures.
To: RWR8189
I didn't mean to fail! I'm sorry!
To: Lazamataz
The logic is dazzling! I am thunderstruck! Awed! AMAZED! He must've saw you wearin' those goatskin leggings.
35
posted on
12/27/2003 7:09:28 AM PST
by
uglybiker
(If it ain't broke, you ain't tryin'!)
To: hoagy62
Why is it that so many of our craft going to Mars have gone silent recently? (No, I'm not having a "tinfoil hat moment".) Interesting, Richard C. Hoagland (who has lots of tinfoil hat comments about Mars space missions) actually took off his tinfoil hat and said something on the Coast to Coast AM radio show last night that makes considerable sense: Beagle 2 was essentially a very cheaply-developed component of the Mars Express spacecraft that was essentially added to the spacecraft almost literally at the last moment of the design of Mars Express. Because it was so cheaply developed, they never had the time to test all the components of the landing system, and if any one part of the landing system failed the whole Beagle 2 lander would have crash-landed on the surface of Mars in a couple of thousand pieces. Now, if the two NASA landers that will land on Mars on 3 January 2004 and 24 January 2004 failed to function, that would be a very different story indeed.
Anyway, the most important part of Mars Express--the orbiter with its state-of-the-art sensors--is functioning correctly and is now undergoing a slow retrobraking process using its onboard manuevering thrusters to adjust its orbit from its currently highly-elliptical path and also move it to a near-polar orbit. That should be completed by the end of January 2004, in which time the sensors on Mars Express will its its high-resolution camera (including stereoscopic views), infrared camera, and imaging radar to carefully look at every detail of Mars' surface--especially looking for water.
To: RayChuang88
Regarding Mars Express and the (admittedly very exciting) search for WATER up to 5 kilometers beneath the Martian surface, I've recently read what's at:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/express/mission/sc_science_marsis02.html I am a little concerned, though, that the search won't do a particularly good job of detecting the presence of ICE. Mars is COLD and liquid may not be that abundant nowadays. The abovementioned link only makes a rather passing reference to the quest to distinguish between rock and ice near the surface, though. I'm concerned about the potential for "false negatives" and the adverse impact they could have on fervor for Mars exploration. WashingtonPost.com suggests that ice and rock will be distinguishable by Mars Express, but again I see few (if any) details:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30844-2003Dec25.html QUOTE: "Mars Express can even probe beneath the surface of the planet using long wavelength radio waves from a 130-foot antenna to search for signs of subsurface water or ice."
In the mean time, I'm not particularly inclined to trust anything that Astrium says on its website. Look at all the promises made by Space Launch Initiative contractors in the USA, for example, even as the cost of launching humans into space from North America has gone nowhere but UP over time. Judging from your recent MARSIS analysis, it's increasingly seeming like ESA's contractors were more concerned with putting on a good show in hopes of securing greater funding for future projects. Doing a particularly good job seemed secondary, if not worth avoiding altogether. After all, the sting of defeat could prod the taxpayers into forking over more hard-earned Euros to recover from the international embarrassment.
To: RWR8189
The name obviously jinxed the thing.
To: RWR8189
An awful lot of Mars missions seem jinxed. You don't suppose there is something up there defending something do you?
To: RWR8189
Wasn't Darwin's ship called The Beagle?
40
posted on
12/27/2003 9:09:51 AM PST
by
Zechariah11
(so they weighed for my hire thirty pieces of silver Zech 11:12)
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