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Do you believe the 2012 Mayan Prophecy? view!
whowillsurvive2012.com - The Mayan Calendar predicts the end of time: 2012. See the trailer for 2012, opening November 13.
82 Comments
- BullHunter, on 01/03/2009, -1/+113Unfortunately, they have no one to celebrate with. The place just doesn't have the atmosphere for a party
- cankillar, on 01/03/2009, -2/+72God damn, they were only supposed to work for THREE MONTHS. NASA did something right this time.
- rrc7cz, on 01/03/2009, -2/+43I love how we can build robots that fly to distant planets and weather ridiculous environments for over 5 years, but GM still can't build a Cadillac that doesn't ***** the bed after 3 years sitting in a garage on Earth.
- Bloake, on 01/03/2009, -0/+32They're like real-life Wall-Es.
- sgvprelude, on 01/03/2009, -2/+33I think this is a case of "under promise and over deliver." Let's tell the people 3 months, but in actuality make it work for 5 years
- andytronic, on 03/25/2009, -1/+29I'm sure they'll get into the spirit given the opportunity.
- michaelpinto, on 01/03/2009, -1/+27Rovers are cute — but I'd like to see humans go there sooner than later!
- nirav72, on 01/03/2009, -0/+21One of them has a broken wheel and is still limping along. Amazing...
Still rollin' bitches!! - inactive, on 01/03/2009, -2/+17Goes to show NASA purposely underestimated their lifespan.
If they had estimated their lifespan to be 5 years and they only lasted 90 days we would have buried them. - Ouze, on 01/04/2009, -0/+13And to think, Chrysler said it was impossible - an American-made vehicle lasted 5 years!
- kelvinlls, on 01/03/2009, -2/+14Well, unless there are real Martians on that planet, then they might get someone to join the party!
- Maddoktor2, on 01/03/2009, -0/+10Am I the only diehard geek here, or did anyone else here get their name added to the CDs they carried along?
C'mon, fess up! - houndeyex, on 01/03/2009, -0/+9"happy birthday mate" for all the lazy people
- SquidLips, on 01/03/2009, -1/+9
Well actually it was a JPL project as part of their large suite of unmanned vehicles. JPL's unmanned missions have provided a scientific windfall, while the ex-pilots who run NASA are pushing expensive, dangerous, and scientifically poor manned missions. NASAs manned missions are little more than stunts; the real science is at JPL. - Zalian, on 01/03/2009, -0/+7It sounds like they are established already. Perhaps we should send them a pet.
- borez, on 01/03/2009, -4/+9011010000110000101110000011100000111100100100000011000100110100101110010
011101000110100001100100011000010111100100100000011011010110000101110100
01100101
/Fires up satellite dish - inactive, on 01/04/2009, -0/+55 years?... My stupid GMC truck only made it 3 before breaking down. :(
- BossKey, on 01/03/2009, -0/+5This is all armchair quarterbacking. If the rover vehicle had botched the landing - no fault of the rovers themselves - everyone would be bemoaning the incompetence and waste of NASA.
It also assumes that each team does not do their best and that this success was planned. In reality NASA has no idea which probes will see each and every critical step succeed and which steps will fail, which failures they can recover from through ingenuity, and which they can't.
The reality is that NASA got lucky on these two. It could have been a different two probes that got lucky. But the posters here seem to think that all mission trends can be extrapolated and future design successes guaranteed from the particular results we got from the Mars probes that crashed and those that survived for 5 years. That's just not realistic. Yes, we do learn from mistakes, but still, you could send another 6 identical rovers up to Mars and watch 5 fail. You could send up more of the probes that failed and watch them survive for 10 years. Because that's just how it goes in primitive space exploration. - inactive, on 01/03/2009, -1/+5This is the most successful planetary mission of all time. Why 6 more improved versions of these remarkable rovers weren't sent to all corners of Mars is unfathomable! Instead NASA built the single Mars Science Laboratory for $2 billion, a veritable Battlestar Galactica. And now it is delayed until 2011.
- Mauly, on 01/03/2009, -2/+6I like Robots, they are cool..
- publishcron, on 01/03/2009, -1/+5We may not be celebrating long. Spirit is in pretty rough shape:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status.html ... - y0urcl0ne, on 01/04/2009, -0/+4Meecrob?
- kouchan21, on 01/04/2009, -1/+5What makes more sense?
1- giving billions to failing bank so that a handful of people can keep their lifestyle
2- giving billions to an adventure that would give hope to everyone on earth, finance hi-tech industries full of smart, hard-working and passionate people - Cubeforce, on 01/04/2009, -0/+4Such an achievement, hats off to Nasa / JPL!
This newspost is as good as an excuse to post this amazing picture:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5 ...
Incredibly detailed.. you can even see the rover tracks near the edges of the crater. - BossKey, on 01/03/2009, -0/+4Too bad the rovers are on opposite sides of the planet.
- laizzesfaire, on 01/03/2009, -0/+4Red Planet? Screw that, how bout Total Recall
- karthurneil, on 01/04/2009, -0/+4Science bless those little bastards.
- soogy, on 01/04/2009, -0/+4Abso-*****-lutely! You know, even though I personally had nothing to do with the Mars Rovers, for some reason I feel really proud about them.
It's amazing. We spent $800 million on a pair of rovers that were supposed to last for three months. That same $800 million lasted 5 years. It cost us $800 million to amass this great depth of scientific knowledge. It cost what... 1,000 times more to wage a war? What a sad world we live in. In theory, we could have funded 1,000 more scientific projects in the same time frame. - borez, on 01/03/2009, -0/+4Or the Binary challenged.
- GuacamoleSan, on 01/03/2009, -2/+6I heard champagne mixed with a little martian ice-water is simply divine
- inactive, on 01/03/2009, -0/+4Yeah I thought the same thing sgv. They probably just told the public it would only work for 3 months so if they did ***** up it wouldn't have seemed like they totally wasted a *****-ton of money.
- houndeyex, on 01/03/2009, -0/+3Screw that, didn't you see Red Planet?
- Ouze, on 01/04/2009, -0/+3that's the best nipple free image i have seen all day!
- lucutus, on 01/04/2009, -0/+3There are 10 types of people, those who understand binary and those who don’t.
- trejrco, on 01/05/2009, -0/+3"under-promise and over-deliver"
- eminn3m, on 01/03/2009, -0/+3http://my-i-p.com/Binary_Code_Generator.html
- charlietuna, on 01/03/2009, -0/+3That would be some awesome AI if they really were celebrating.
- Cubeforce, on 01/04/2009, -0/+3In a few years they'll be joined by their big brother the Mars Science Laboratory (if all goes well !)
- RobotBuddha, on 01/04/2009, -0/+3What are we supposed to say? I don't have the background to understand the science being done, even though I think the exploration is amazingly cool. A page of "Oh, cool!" is hardly worth making though.
- BossKey, on 01/03/2009, -1/+4Digg would have buried them if they stated 90 days but the landing was a failure, like those other probes.
- andytronic, on 03/25/2009, -0/+3So nothing's changed. Are you really that surprised?
- sox101, on 01/04/2009, -0/+2If the person exploring wants to do so and accepts all risks, then why does it matter?
- inactive, on 01/04/2009, -1/+3Better to over-underestimate and than to under-overestimate.
- glenathon, on 01/04/2009, -0/+2Jeez...these things lasted longer than my first car.
- marioara, on 01/04/2009, -0/+2wow..that's a bit
- ZarkSeven, on 01/04/2009, -0/+2That's awesome. What a great mission.
- saleem, on 01/05/2009, -0/+2When NASA has a mission objective of like three months, they need to hit that with 99.9% certainty (example goal, not necessarily the right number). This may give them 80% confidence to last a year, 60% confidence to last 2 years, etc, until under certain circumstances, they might get that golden, 500,000 mile Honda that lasts forever which seems to have happened, which is awesome for Science
- yugosakimi, on 01/05/2009, -0/+2Dugg for good Mars pun.
- gordoncam1, on 01/04/2009, -0/+2absolutely. It's very expensive and dangerous. The risks aren't yet worth the rewards.
- EntropyFan, on 01/05/2009, -0/+2Not really. They have had some real luck with wind blowing dust off the solar panels and finding good places to park for the winter (to tilt the solar panels enough towards the sun).
I bet if you could go back in time and explain to mission control how they were going to keep the rovers working for 5 years they would laugh at you.
Some truly inspired thinking.
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