I am putting this here because I believe it is an event that humanity should be proud of. While some countries struggle to build missiles that can reach a couple of thousand miles, here we have an event where a SUV sized Rover has been placed on another planet to search for clues to life there. http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/06/tech/mars-rover-curiosity/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
So you want to rub in the fact that we can use millions of out tax money to put a rover in Mars and also say all humanity should be pround of it? (I am proud of it for sure, pretty fucking cool) That is like saying all humanity should be proud of the way Spain wooped some ass at the world cup. By the way this is already in the Science thread.
My bad, didn't know it was in there. Actually my comment about the missiles was a swipe at all of us who spend millions more on weapons then on exploration and something that has a potential greater impact on humanity. I just wonder where we would be if we devoted even half our resources world wide that we do on Defense to the sciences without a military application.
Well with out that spending maybe we would be speaking Russian right now . Plust it was military spending to research how to kill eachother from space that allowed NASA to do what they do.
Don't get me wrong about defense spending, my comment refered to the world as a whole not just the US. And during the Cold War NASA had a far larger budget to work with then post-Cold War.
I am looking forward to seeing the color photos that come back later this week. I hope that they get some interesting results right away from the testing. I was too young to witness the space race, but hopefully we will see a new race soon that will bring about a great deal of knowledge about our region of space nearest us.
The flight director was an Iranian-American, Bobak Ferdowsi, who has become an instant celebrity: http://now.msn.com/nasa-staffer-bobak-ferdowsi-goes-viral-during-mars-rover-landing
OUCH!! LOL that was good. Yeah that whole situation is just plain stupid. You can see my sig what I think about calling people ?-American...
Great. Way to go, man... Now the mouthbreathers will start blogging about how Obama secretly put an Iranian terrorist in charge of the Mars rover... Stop trying to oppress Christian Martians, you socialist Islamist bastard!
I believe they said that they specifically targeted that landing spot because of the similarity to places on Earth.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/09/us/mars-curiosity/index.html?hpt=hp_t3 Some great panoramic shots here.