NASA Unveils Color Photo of Mars

AP ^ | 01/06/04 | AP

[Pikamax]

PASADENA, Calif.

[longtermmemmory]

Ahhh so the landings were timed to go with the state of the union address. (the french are probably saying the rovers bumped off the beagle.)

[RightWhale]

These Rovers are supposed to last 90 days. If they fail sooner, they may be returned to the manufacturer for refund or replacement.

[Charles Martel]

They could have helped themselves on this score by going with an RTGs. That kept the ALSEPS on the Apollo missions and the Viking Landers going for years, and have done quite nicely on the Voyager and Galileo and Cassini spacecraft, but the wackos didn't like it because of that "nasty nuclear material" (plutonium). So you go with the PC solar panels and storage batteries, and end up with a 90-day mission (if you're lucky).

Sometimes I think things are just a bit *too* "open". NASA should've slapped some solar panels on it as a *backup* power source and gone ahead with the nuclear power. Honestly, there's no reason anyone needs to know precisely how these probes work - but limiting the capabilities of these machines for such idiotic reasons is absurd.

[Mr. Mojo]

looks like some part of the desert out in Nevada

Expcect Arabs, the French, and tinfoilers of all stripes to be spinning in that direction shortly.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

Looks like a Hollywood sound stage to me.

Well actually, the pic was taken at Willard Whytes plant just outside of Las Vegas.

[pbear8]

I hope the "Ground Force" crew gets here soon.

[mikrofon]

The Martians are actually TURTLE-LIKE ALIENS -- they're all over the place!

[bert]

.....Who knows?.....

Interns.... Fox lets them work hands on.

[bert]

If you look closely, there are very very large clear areas in a linear pattern extending from the right foreground to the horizon. These are the prints of something very big......

How about "bouncemarks"

[jpsb]

weight might have something to do with the decision, I hope so cause otherwise you are right.

[bert]

Actually, there was no Beagle.

It is a media construct dreamed up to glom onto some underdog sympathy and fame timed for maximum exposure.

They get credit for partial sucess at no real cost even though they they actually did nothing but put out some press releases.

[WarmLiquidGhoo]

"Aaak aaak. Aaak. Aaak aaak."

[OrioleFan]

I guess the fine print for Beagle said "Batteries not included".

[reagan_fanatic]

The least the Martians could have done was tidy up the place a bit. What slobs.

[Fishrrman]

Doesn't this image bear an eerie resemblance to the one that was used for the opening credits of "The Twilight Zone" many years ago?

Cheers!
- John

[Momaw Nadon]

Beautiful!

Nice pic!

[southernnorthcarolina]

I believe I correctly predicted the results of this very expensive snapshot a couple of days ago:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wait with bated breath.

My guess is that the color photos will confirm that some of the rocks on Mars are reddish-brown, and that some are brownish-red.

How much green have we spent on Mars? And why?

5 posted on 01/04/2004 7:08:57 PM EST by southernnorthcarolina

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I continue to be underwhelmed.

[chimera]

weight might have something to do with the decision, I hope so cause otherwise you are right.

RTGs do pretty well on a weight vs. power produced and longevity basis. A reactor does even better. Nuclear "batteries" have a longer "shelf life" than their chemical counterparts. Long, cold nights don't bother them. A solar array with conventional storage batteries is actually quite inefficient and doesn't last long to boot.

Using solar panels restricted the possible landing sites quite severely. They were limited to a fairly narrow belt centered on the Martian equator, to get the maximum insolation to the panels. That eliminated a lot of interesting sites. That's not to say the sites eventually chosen were not good ones, but it shows you how making a basic decision on something like power sources has downstream consequences that a lot of people never know about. Using RTGs instead of solar panels would have made this problem go away.

But using solar panels "looks better", especially to the wackos.

But one possible reason why RTGs were not used is that we can't make them anymore. They used to be fabricated at the DOE-Mound Laboratories site, about 60 miles down the road from me. That facility was shut down and shuttered (along with all of its capabilities) as a casualty of the Clinton-era reduction in nuclear R&D in this country. The last decent-scale RTD I know of that was being worked on there was the one that was slated for the "Pluto Express" mission. I don't know if that one was scrubbed or not. I suppose Clinton and the wackos decided that we don't need home-grown nuclear technology capability anymore. Just import those RTGs from the Chinese or Russians if we need them (like everything else).