Mars Phoenix Mission

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: alkemyst

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: alkemyst
actually we have benefited from NASA technology used to benefit our military....as long as they keep making up wars the technology will be flowing.

I would also hope that we can keep the technology flowing without wars.

no one wants to pay for it. When it's forced then stuff gets invented 🙁

Rather unfortunate, isn't it?
If nothing's trying to kill us, hey, why keep trying?

Well hey, large asteroids could pose a threat to humanity. Sure the risk of it happening in our lifetimes is low, but the risk of hit happening ever is pretty darn high. It happened before, and it'll happen again. NASA technology could help nudge aside any hazardous rocks if they're caught early enough.

That, and darn it, I want house robots - things like Asimo that would do stuff around the house. We need more technology breeders to get super high-tech stuff that could help with that sort of technology.



At least CERN got the funding it needed. We in the US canceled our bigass particle accelerator project. Psh, particle physics, who needs that?

Damn useless electrons, some idiot physicist wasted his life studying their properties.🙂

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: Shawn
I don't get why the pictures are in black and white and of low quality. Digital camera technology is cheap now. Hell my cell phone takes 1MP pictures.

It's been said time and time again. The black and white is because they use different filters and take several images.

Also the low resolution is because it's really hard to make a sensor larger than that with the sensitivity and low noise that they have. I took an astro course on instrumentation and the noise levels on those CCDs are orders of magnitude better than your "top of the line" ones in the high end Nikon and Canon cameras. Also, they are sensitive to radiation from well beyond the visual spectrum, reaching far into the UV and the IR. They also have to have a fairly linear response across that bandwidth as well.

I've taken some high quality images of star clusters with a 1024x1024 CCD that you'd never be able to touch with your best camera and a set of Canon L-series lenses.

 

[spittledip]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
I wonder what the world would look like if we took the billions we spent on war and spent it on things like NASA or cancer research.

I wonder too. NASA is money wasted. You talk about e-penis? This is S-PENIS.

 

[Jeff7]

Phoenix Lander on the surface, taken from orbit, in color