Wonderful Photographs from Mars

[Chew]

Where does this "lot 171" crap come from anyway?

[Captain Swoop]

There are pictures of Mars from more than NASA. Are they faked?
When other agencies land on AMrs and send their pictures that confirm the NASA pictures, will theybe faked as well?

[Jockndoris]

Thanks for all your responses.  I have been away enjoiyng a wonderful holiday for the last two weeks which explains why I have not yet responded to your many comments.  . It is clear that my post has raised a lot of interest and I will reply to each one in turn.  We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.

[Chew]

We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.

I have bolded what I see as the problem. What are you basing your expectations on? A profound knowledge, understanding, and experience of science and engineering or is it just sheer ignorance?

[LunarOrbit]

We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.

You've been a member of this forum for almost one month and we have still heard nothing exciting or useful from you. I suspect you're a hoax.

[Jason Thompson]

We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.

Thing is, that's also what everyone who actually knows what Curiosity is doing expects. It's the most complex piece of machinery ever landed on mars. There is a LOT of testing and checking to do. It has barely begun its exploration mission yet. Why are you in such a hurry for the data? And what exactly do you expect to hear from it if it is real?

[sts60]

Thanks for all your responses.  I have been away enjoiyng a wonderful holiday for the last two weeks which explains why I have not yet responded to your many comments.

Like the way you never responded to the "Who Shot Armstrong?" thread, yet cited it in this thread?

It is clear that my post has raised a lot of interest and I will reply to each one in turn.

It's clear that you have said a lot of things which are completely wrong, and have been rebutted, but have yet to deal with any of the replies in any substantive matter.

We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.

Those of us who actually know something about the subject don't agree with you.   Just the landing alone provided a massive amount of useful engineering data, and MSL hasn't really even started its science phase yet.

[Echnaton]

We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.

If you've seen nothing of interest in the Mars mission, you are the one lacking in curiosity.

[ka9q]

We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.

Nothing?

Now I admit that "excitement" is an emotion, and emotions are inherently subjective. But the mere fact that they just successfully landed a rover on Mars with almost 5 times the mass of the previous model using a complex and novel landing mechanism and procedure that worked on the very first try -- well, I certainly consider that exciting even if you don't.

As someone I once knew used to say, if Beethoven's 9th Symphony doesn't get you going, then you must be dead.

[ka9q]

For those getting impatient for results from the new Mars rover Curiosity, consider the following.

Radio signals, like light, are subject to the inverse square law. That is, when you keep everything else the same and double the distance, the received signal strength drops by a factor of 4. Electrical power is very expensive to generate in space, so that necessarily means that the achievable data rate also drops by a factor of 4.

Mars is currently 15 minutes 38 seconds light time from earth. That's just about 7,000 times as far as a geostationary communications satelllite. Applying the inverse square law, that's a data rate of .00000002 times what you can get from geostationary orbit. If you could get 1 gigabit/second from geostationary orbit, that would be only 20.5 *bits* per second from Mars. Not megabits. Not kilobits. Not even bytes. Bits.

In the first 20 sols (Martian days), a total of about 7 gigabits was received from Curiosity. All in all, I'd say they're doing a pretty good job.

[twik]

Well, since Jockndoris is back, perhaps he can respond to my enquiry about his own expectations?

1. What "new elements" would you expect to be found on Mars? Where would they fall on the periodic table? How would the Martian environment create them, compared to Earth?

2. What "new compounds" should be formed in the Martian environment, assuming there are no "new elements" to be found? What specifically about the Martian environment would force the elements to combine in ways not found on Earth?

3. Are you sure that your definition of "new and interesting" is not simply based on what you want to see on Mars (Catwomen!)?

[Abaddon]

Thanks for all your responses.  I have been away enjoiyng a wonderful holiday for the last two weeks which explains why I have not yet responded to your many comments.

Good for you. But now that you have replied we can await your responses. Oh wait, that was three days ago, and nothing since.

It is clear that my post has raised a lot of interest and I will reply to each one in turn.

Yet you have not.

 

We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.

Define "exciting" and "useful". How did you come by your expectations? What were you expecting?

[stutefish]

So far, it looks like the data rate from Curiosity is much greater than the data rate from Jockdnoris.

How many photos have we gotten so far from the rover? And how many from Jock?

[ka9q]

So far, it looks like the data rate from Curiosity is much greater than the data rate from Jockdnoris.

Considerably more entropy, too.

[Drewid]

Thanks for all your responses.  I have been away enjoiyng a wonderful holiday for the last two weeks

Nice, not too expensive I hope, somewhere economical?