Wonderful Photographs from Mars

[Jockndoris]

Wonderful Photographs from MARS

I was very excited to see the first pictures which have just arrived from Mars directly from those wonderful people at NASA.

“The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States”

This is the headline in Astromony Magazine who are the first people to spot that NASA are pulling the same fast one on us again.

We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.

There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.

It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt  pictures of exquisite quality of a near perfectly flat landing area.

They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise.   What are they going to find this time ?

[carpediem]

Wonderful Photographs from MARS

Random capitalization of words. Hmm, I wonder who you might be.

I was very excited to see the first pictures which have just arrived from Mars directly from those wonderful people at NASA.

“The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States”

This is the headline in Astromony Magazine who are the first people to spot that NASA are pulling the same fast one on us again.

We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.

And your evidence for it being shot at 'lot 171' is?

There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.

It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt  pictures of exquisite quality of a near perfectly flat landing area.

The Voyager probes sent pictures a hell of a lot further than Curiosity is.

They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise.   What are they going to find this time ?

We don't know yet, you'll have to wait and see.

[Jason Thompson]

This is the headline in Astromony Magazine who are the first people to spot that NASA are pulling the same fast one on us again.

Evidence?

We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.

Evidence?

There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.

Please explain why the fact that it took a spacecraft months to physically travel to mars has any bearing on the transmission of images by radio waves, as has been done for decades at this point?

It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed

You have no idea how space travel works, have you? Please feel free to explain the speed at which the spacecraft travelled on its journey.

[ChrLz]

We all fell for it in 1969..

How's the sextant going?  Won any new comp's?

[DataCable]

There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.

Why?

It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt  pictures of exquisite quality of a near perfectly flat landing area.

Yes, we are.  What of it?

They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise.

Were they looking for "new chemicals compounds?"

[sts60]

Hi, Jockndoris.  Welcome to the board.

Wonderful Photographs from MARS

I was very excited to see the first pictures which have just arrived from Mars directly from those wonderful people at NASA.

Yes, I was excited too.  Especially since I particpated in the design analysis of the generator currently powering MSL on Mars.  And, yes, those people at NASA, or more accurately JPL, are pretty clever.

“The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States”

Resembling, not "identical to".  I grew up in the southwestern United States.  It's not the same as Mars.

This is the headline in Astromony Magazine who are the first people to spot that NASA are pulling the same fast one on us again.

Wrong on a few different counts.  First, that's a sub-heading, not a headline.  Second, Astronomy thinks the mission is quite real.  Third, that description was issued by NASA and quoted by the magazine.

We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.

Have you been to Nevada?   I have.  The parts I've seen don't look like the Moon.  Of course, your unsupported assertion fails on many other counts as well, but there's no point in discussing them unless you actually supply some details for your claim.

There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.

Non sequitir.  It takes radio signals only minutes to make that voyage.  We have routinely received "high quality photographs" from spacecraft much farther away.

It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed

Meaningless.  MSL was on a trajectory designed for the launch vehicle constraints and coasted almost the entire way to Mars.  The notion of "full speed" has no particular definition in this case.  You might as well say the Moon orbits the Earth at "full speed".

and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt  pictures of exquisite quality

First, it's been done before.  A lot.  Second, you are simply appealing to personal incredulity.  I don't find it hard to believe, and I work in this business.  Do you?  Third, can you supply a specific reason the systems should not work as claimed?

of a near perfectly flat landing area.

Of course.  The landing area was selected to be flat.  It's merely flat enough.

They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise.

Wrong.  Again.  You have no idea at all what you're talking about.

What are they going to find this time ?

Several very interesting things, I expect.   That's the beautiful reality of these missions, quite unlike the cramped, dreary fantasy world of the ignorant conspiracy-mongers.

Y'all come back now, y'hear?

[Halcyon Dayz, FCD]

We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.

You seem to assume that the telecasts are the only evidence.
You know what they say about assumptions?

There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.

Because you say so?

It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt  pictures of exquisite quality of a near perfectly flat landing area.

Argument from personal incredulity.

They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise.   

Do you know what a chemical compound is?

What are they going to find this time ?

New stuff.
The universe is like that, full of surprises.

[Chew]

It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed

Full speed??? Bwahahahaha!

[ka9q]

Yes, I was excited too.  Especially since I particpated in the design analysis of the generator currently powering MSL on Mars.

Did you? Neat! One of the reasons I kept my fingers firmly crossed during that landing was the knowledge that much of our remaining stock of Pu-238 is on that thing. Are we ever going to make more, or will the remaining stock be it?

When I saw on TV the structure holding the RTG (the rover's "tail") in the cleanroom I noticed the pipes looping around inside it. I assumed those were coolant pipes carrying waste heat into the rover so less of its limited electrical output would have to be spent on heaters. Is that right? How much electricity still has to be spent on heaters?

Also, I was wondering why the cruise stage had solar panels. Was the RTG not enough? I wouldn't think of cruise as requiring much power unless the use of a medium gain antenna required an exceptional amount of RF power to compensate.

How was the RTG's waste heat dissipated during cruise? I assume EDL was brief enough to not be a problem.

[ka9q]

It was "six minutes of terror" for the MER rovers. It's not the signal delay (which was about 14 minutes for MSL in each direction), it's the time for entry, descent, and landing in which a failure is most likely going to cause loss of the spacecraft.

IMHO, it still wasn't quite as much "terror" (suspense, really) as for the (failed) MPL mission in 1999. That one was designed without any real-time communications during EDL. As the review board pointed out, this was a perfectly reasonable decision from a mission management standpoint; if something failed there wasn't anything that could be done anyway, and we'd know if it had landed by transmissions from the surface.

But from a program point of view it was intolerable because, when it failed, there was no way to know for sure exactly when and how it failed so the problem could be fixed in future missions. They could only conclude that if the lander made it to leg deployment, it would have crashed when their bouncing surface-sensing switches were misinterpreted by the flight software as surface contact, and the descent rockets cut off well above the surface.

As the saying goes, there is always one more bug...

[ka9q]

There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.

Let's see your fully detailed radio link budget calculations to back this up. JPL routinely calculates these to the hundreths of a decibel so I expect you to do the same.

Note: this is my specialty, so you won't be able to BS me.

[Noldi400]

I found a sardine. Anyone have a firecracker I can borrow?

[Echnaton]

It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed...

This is too funny.  What exactly is full speed in space? Is there  a half speed? What would idle speed be?

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

You know that India will be sending a probe to MARS around 2013?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-19110039

Are they faking it as well? If they're not, will they spill the beans on NASA when they find no evidence of Curiosity or how they been paid off to stay silent?

Do you think the other NASA MARS rovers are faked as well?

How do you account for the fact it can be easily demonstrated that Curiosity's signals are coming from MARS?

[Glom]

Yay!