Wonderful Photographs from Mars

[Glom]

But anyway, why should a camera designed for high resolution photography be incapable of high resolution photography?

[Jason Thompson]

“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.

Evidence? 'Resembles' is not the same as 'is'. Just how different do you expect a desert plain on Mars to look from a desert plain on Earth?

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 that 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.

Why not? And what does the time taken for a spacecraft to reach somewhere have to do with the time taken to send back information via radio waves?
 

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

What is 'full speed' when referring to space flight?

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.

What exactly is so challenging about that?

I await your answers, and some indication that you understand the first thing about space flight.

[Andromeda]

I await your answers, and some indication that you understand the first thing about space flight.

Me too!

[DataCable]

"Jockndoris" posted this exact block of text here yesterday.  He has not addressed any of the responses there.

Does this thread rightfully belong in this section?

[Kiwi]

...those wonderful people at NASA.

Cool, aren't they?  Coloured mohawks nowadays, instead of Brylcremed, neatly parted hair; and not a pocket-protector in sight.

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

That sounds like a fairly good way to describe that part of Mars to laypeople like myself.  While I've never left my country in the southwestern Pacific, I could no doubt find out what portions of the southwestern United States look like, much more easily than I could understand if they said it looks like a flat portion of Olympus Mons, about 22 km up its southwestern side.

Neil Armstrong said of the area around Tranquillity Base:  "It has a stark beauty all its own.  It's like much of the high desert of the United States.  It's different, but it's very pretty out here."  That probably meant more to earthlings than if he said it looked like Mare Humorum.

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.

Gee, you sound like a real space expert!  :-)  If what you say is true, how come we have photos of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune taken close-up by spacecraft?  Last I heard, those four planets have long been a tad further away than Mars.  I also heard there's a craft out by Saturn right now, and it will be sending back photos of Saturn, its rings and its moons for some time to come. 

And isn't there currently a spacecraft out near the heliopause, beyond our solar system, and still sending back signals to earth with a transmitter of only a few watts, and which it has been doing for decades?

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

Do you really believe that?  This document, http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/letss/Mineralogy.pdf
tells us about four new minerals found on the Moon:

New minerals

Armalcolite (Mg,Fe)(Ti,Zr)2O5
Tranquillityite Fe8(Zr,Y)2Ti3Si3O24
Pyroxferroite CaFe6(SiO3)7
Yttrobetafite (Ca,Y)2(Ti,Nb)2O7

Guess who Armalcolite is named after:  ARMstrong, ALdrin and COLlins, the three guys who first brought it back to Earth.

However, if this is wrong, please do give us the benefit of your expertise and tell us how the world's geologists and mineralogists and chemists who understand that could be so mistaken.

[Tedward]

You get HD TV from 144,000 KM give or take a few. Live as well.

[sts60]

Well, since you repeated your post from the "Other Conspiracies" section, I'll repeat my reply...

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?

[gillianren]

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

Heck, JPL is in the southwestern United States; we drove past it about a month ago.  Every single person there could tell you the ways Mars is different.  And that's leaving aside the, you know, wildlife of the Southwest.  You can't find much of the Southwest that barren of plantlife, for starters.

[sts60]

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.

Well, not most, but a good chunk.

Are we ever going to make more, or will the remaining stock be it?

There are plans to make more domestically; whether or not that will actually get funding remains to be seen.  Also, maybe we can buy some more from the Russians... if they have any... and they are not soft negotiators.

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?

Exactly right.

How much electricity still has to be spent on heaters?

That I don't know.

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.

I'm not sure about this.  The cruise stage provided power to the descent stage, but looking at a schematic, it appears that the rover could too.  Also, the descent stage had thermal batteries for EDL since it had to be independent of both.

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

A separate flight-only cooling loop carried the heat out to radiators on the cruise stage.  I don't know exactly when the rover coolant loop started, but, yeah, EDL - in particular the part still covered by the backshell - didn't last long enough to be a problem.

[Chew]

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?

Don't you watch Star Trek? "One quarter impulse", "Full impulse", etc. Obviously our new old friend here learned all his science from science fiction.

[Glom]

Armalcolite?  It should be Armcolalite.  CMP's name goes before LMP.

[sts60]

Armalcolite rolls off the tongue better.

BTW, in my above post, I had misread ka9q's comment of "much of our remaining stock..." as "most of..."; my bad.

[Drewid]

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?

Full speed could be 'warp factor 8' or 'standard by twelve' or 'lightspeed' (delete as applicable).


Meanwhile in the real world...

[Jason Thompson]

'standard by twelve'

Always makes me smile to see a Blake's 7 reference...

[Donnie B.]

In space, the only thing that could legitimately be called full speed is C.

I don't think the MSL managed to quite reach that speed.