View Full Version : Wow. Just wow.
Maybe this belongs under Public Policy, but somehow it seems more appropriate to post it under Success Stories.
It's the video of the landing of the Mars rover Perseverence (https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/videos/?v=461).
I took the time last week to watch as the landing took place. You never saw so many nervous people in the same room. Understandably so, since a lot of them had spent the last decade of their lives on this, and it all comes down to a few seconds of terror.
Amazing what we're capable of when we work together.
It is awesome. Wonder what further lies ahead.
I saw that on TV last week as well, oldhat! It was amazing--I can't wrap my mind around how all that happens. It was so exciting being "in the room" with them at the point of the successful landing.
I'm looking forward to hearing about what they learn.
happystuff
2-23-21, 9:58am
I also saw it and totally agree - simply amazing!
SteveinMN
2-23-21, 10:04am
Not to politicize it, but I'm a little surprised I haven't seen reports of conspiracy theorists debunking the landing as fake (I've seen some where people claim the snow in Texas was fake). Maybe science and the scientific method really can show us new things.
It reminded me of the first Mars landing (was it?) when everyone held their breath, but I have too little imagination to be enraptured by empty, rocky planets.
catherine
2-23-21, 11:41am
It reminded me of the first Mars landing (was it?) when everyone held their breath, but I have too little imagination to be enraptured by empty, rocky planets.
For me it adds data to the answer to my burning question about earth-ceptionalism... If we are only one planet in a whole galaxy, and maybe others, that has met all the requirements for evolving life forms in such prolific quantity and variety, isn't that a simply miraculous thing??? We have either simply happenstanced ourselves into a winning the Powerball of chemical reactions or ... (save that part for the Spirituality forum).
I was amazed at the quality of the video. So clear. You had to remind yourself--this is really out there! The rover only just landed and it left for its journey last July!
I read something this morning I thought was cool. The deputy project manager is a gymnastics dad. He got the idea to film Perseverance's descent after his daughter wore a camera while performing a backflip. I never really think of these space scientist nerds in terms of being regular people.
frugal-one
2-23-21, 12:35pm
We have children here who are food compromised, people out of work and possibly living on the streets and we are wasting money on this. It makes no sense at this time IMO.
Teacher Terry
2-23-21, 1:07pm
Frugal, I totally agree with you but our country doesn’t care.
happystuff
2-23-21, 1:13pm
We have children here who are food compromised, people out of work and possibly living on the streets and we are wasting money on this. It makes no sense at this time IMO.
While I don't disagree, I do wonder whether any of the money used for this would have made it to, let alone resolve/eliminate those issues. I can't help but wonder if the problem isn't more the ever-widening economic/income gap that exists not only in this country, but around the world. Wouldn't closing that gap do more to help remedy the food compromised, unemployed, homeless, etc.? Just wondering.
frugal-one
2-23-21, 1:43pm
If I understand this recent trip... it is to see if life previous inhabited that planet. The reality is ... that it doesn’t matter but the money spent here WOULD help people here now. It may not eliminate or resolve the issue? Who knows? Just spending money on this seems frivolous when so many need help.
happystuff
2-23-21, 2:02pm
If I understand this recent trip... it is to see if life previous inhabited that planet. The reality is ... that it doesn’t matter but the money spent here WOULD help people here now. It may not eliminate or resolve the issue? Who knows? Just spending money on this seems frivolous when so many need help.
I could see putting all this project money directly into enhancing and expanding both existing and new social welfare programs across the country for housing, food, healthcare and employment projects for... say, anyone with an income at or below the national poverty level.
GeorgeParker
2-23-21, 4:17pm
If I understand this recent trip... it is to see if life previous inhabited that planet. The reality is ... that it doesn’t matter but the money spent here WOULD help people here now. It may not eliminate or resolve the issue? Who knows? Just spending money on this seems frivolous when so many need help.Why doesn't anyone understand that the money WAS spent here??? It paid salaries, bought material, funded research that resulted in a lot of the technology we now take for granted, and every dollar spent circulated through the economy as people bought things and the people who provided those goods and services used the money they made to buy things and on and on..... I've been listening to this same "the money should have been spent here" crap for 60 years and it's no more true now than is was in 1961.
Are there ways the money could have been targeted better to reduce the income gap or to fund infrastructure improvements or to give everyone free basic medical care or to create environmentally friendly agriculture and energy or any number of other worthy things? Of course it could! But as long as big corporations and rich people create all the rules and make all the decisions, none of that is going to happen. We're lucky that at least the space program has given us tangible technological advances and kept a lot of people employed for all these years.
If you want to defund science, defund the people who build giant colliders and underground labs trying to prove the existence of some elusive sub-atomic particle that may not even exist. Defund the people who spend huge sums building facilities and employing scientists trying to prove that gravity waves actually exist. Defund the people who build giant radio telescopes (SETI) and supply men and equipment to them decade after decade in hopes that maybe one day they'll hear a faint intelligent radio signal that left some distant planet 10,000 years ago.
I don't entirely disagree with the "the money would be better spent here" argument. However, it's hard not to credit the NASA scientists, whose robotic exploration of Mars has been a roaring success, vastly increasing human knowledge at a fraction of the cost of manned space exploration. And while I can't cite specific figures, I'm guessing that most of the scientists who worked on this project could have made much bigger salaries working in the private sector. They did what they did for love, so I'm loathe to split hairs about the cost.
The US is more than wealthy enough to feed its poor, rebuild its infrastructure and provide medical care for all citizens. Recently I read somewhere that Jeff Bezos could give $100,000 to every one of Amazon's 800,000+ global employees and still be richer than he was when the pandemic started. I think that's a much bigger problem than spending $2.7 billion for the kind of stunning accomplishment shown in that video.
All science is learned over decades or centuries of research. Economic inequality comes when wealth is stolen to benefit a few who gain either by birth, war or theft and fight to retain it. All humans, more often men, seem to do this to a greater or lesser degree.
I don't think that science and greed can be classed or evaluated for public benefit together.
frugal-one
2-23-21, 6:27pm
Why doesn't anyone understand that the money WAS spent here??? It paid salaries, bought material, funded research that resulted in a lot of the technology we now take for granted, and every dollar spent circulated through the economy as people bought things and the people who provided those goods and services used the money they made to buy things and on and on..... I've been listening to this same "the money should have been spent here" crap for 60 years and it's no more true now than is was in 1961.
Are there ways the money could have been targeted better to reduce the income gap or to fund infrastructure improvements or to give everyone free basic medical care or to create environmentally friendly agriculture and energy or any number of other worthy things? Of course it could! But as long as big corporations and rich people create all the rules and make all the decisions, none of that is going to happen. We're lucky that at least the space program has given us tangible technological advances and kept a lot of people employed for all these years.
If you want to defund science, defund the people who build giant colliders and underground labs trying to prove the existence of some elusive sub-atomic particle that may not even exist. Defund the people who spend huge sums building facilities and employing scientists trying to prove that gravity waves actually exist. Defund the people who build giant radio telescopes (SETI) and supply men and equipment to them decade after decade in hopes that maybe one day they'll hear a faint intelligent radio signal that left some distant planet 10,000 years ago.
This was not the time to do this. We have so many out of work and food insecurities. Why do we even need to know if there was life there? Who cares?
This was not the time to do this. We have so many out of work and food insecurities. Why do we even need to know if there was life there? Who cares?
Something about how the planets were aligned that made this an attractive window.
I agree that space exploration often leads to new inventions/discoveries--which doesn't make acres of inhospitable red dirt any more attractive to me.
This was not the time to do this. We have so many out of work and food insecurities. Why do we even need to know if there was life there? Who cares?
This is the kind of argument often made against pure science. It's not just whether or not there was ever life on Mars, or how subatomic particles behave, or the mating habits of some obscure insect. It's the discoveries that result from these kinds of explorations that advance human knowledge and very often benefit humankind in ways that aren't immediately apparent.
Who cares about the shapes of birds' beaks in the Galapagos Islands? Charles Darwin did, and laid the foundations of modern biology. But just think of how many poor people in England the cost of that voyage could have fed!
frugal-one
2-23-21, 8:18pm
This is the kind of argument often made against pure science. It's not just whether or not there was ever life on Mars, or how subatomic particles behave, or the mating habits of some obscure insect. It's the discoveries that result from these kinds of explorations that advance human knowledge and very often benefit humankind in ways that aren't immediately apparent.
Who cares about the shapes of birds' beaks in the Galapagos Islands? Charles Darwin did, and laid the foundations of modern biology. But just think of how many poor people in England the cost of that voyage could have fed!
I am sure it did not cost much for Darwin AND we were not in the throws of a pandemic where masses of people were out of work and looking for help with basic necessities. What a waste.
DH says this exploration was done to figure out how to weaponize outer space. Money to be made there. Wouldn't surprise me.
GeorgeParker
2-23-21, 9:54pm
we were not in the throws of a pandemic where masses of people were out of work and looking for help with basic necessities.This mission, like all space probes, was planned years ago and has been in the design, development, and building process ever since. It's rocket was launched on July 30, 2020, which means by the time the pandemic became a thing in March everything had already been done and the rocket was sitting there just waiting for the proper date for it to be launched. Wherefore then dost thou bemoan the coincidence of pandemic and launch as though they were somehow related?
This was not the time to do this. We have so many out of work and food insecurities. Why do we even need to know if there was life there? Who cares?
Projects like this are in the works for YEARS before they happen
GeorgeParker
2-23-21, 10:10pm
Who cares about the shapes of birds' beaks in the Galapagos Islands? Charles Darwin did, and laid the foundations of modern biology. But just think of how many poor people in England the cost of that voyage could have fed!The Beagle was a Royal Navy ship sent on it's long voyage to find and survey foreign lands that Britain had laid claim to or might reasonable lay claim to and the sea routes from Britain to them. Darwin was basically a piece of luggage carried by the ship at the request of someone with enough power to get him onboard under the rubric of "naturalist". IOW Darwin's explorations basically cost the Crown nothing.
And the Crown bloody well had more than enough money to feed all the poor people in England if it had wanted to, but that sort of thing "simply wasn't done" back then because it was firmly believed that feeding the poor just made them lazy and encouraged them to have more useless children like themself. Ref Malthus, Dickens, Scrooge, et al.
happystuff
4-20-21, 10:59am
The Ingenuity - little Mars helicopter - had its first flight on Monday. Successful albeit a short flight, but still interesting.
The Ingenuity - little Mars helicopter - had its first flight on Monday. Successful albeit a short flight, but still interesting.
All the preparation and research that went into this succeeded in a positive outcome. I wonder how the discoveries in developing this achievement will ripple into general use over the next few years
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