MARS is Made of Tennesee Red Clay!

jon-monon

Active Member
MARS is Made of Tenesee Red Clay!

Not blue cheese :D :D :D Love those new pics coming in from our great red neighbor! Thank goodness that robot finally started talking ;)
 

jon-monon

Active Member
dint know our mates lost one too :( Hope it's just wearing a red jacket and blending in :(

Now you know how to model Mars SS, for you futureistic model! MAybe they'll find RR tracks when they dig in and our future will actually be their past :eek:
 
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Fred_M

If you visit some of them "faces on mars" sites they show pictures of a tube that looks suspeciously like the train tubes on Total Recall. DASH
 
I dunno.....
Those pictures look like Arizona to me!
(Remember when the conspiracy nuts were claiming that the manned moon pictures were a fraud?)

This is great for science and all, but I can't shake the nagging feeling that we could have bought a whole lot of square meals and health care for all that money, and probably had some left over for a few science scholarships.

But maybe my priorities are wrong.....

BillS
 
This is great for science and all, but I can't shake the nagging feeling that we could have bought a whole lot of square meals and health care for all that money, and probably had some left over for a few science scholarships.

But maybe my priorities are wrong.....

BillS

Not really, doing this 'on the cheap' doesn't work, as witnessed by the many crashes before
 
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Fred_M

Originally posted by Bill Stone
I dunno.....
Those pictures look like Arizona to me!
(Remember when the conspiracy nuts were claiming that the manned moon pictures were a fraud?)

This is great for science and all, but I can't shake the nagging feeling that we could have bought a whole lot of square meals and health care for all that money, and probably had some left over for a few science scholarships.

But maybe my priorities are wrong.....

BillS
The peasants in Portugal said the same thing about that stupid Spaniard in 1491. And it’s true, the queen could of fed a lot of them for the money she squandered on that foolish trip. They are just gonna fall off the side of the world anyway. We need that money here at home. Ditto with the moon and going to the poles, everest, K2, the transcontinental railroad, the list is endless. It's our nature to explore, otherwise we would still be living naked on a savana, or extinct. DASH
 

RailRon

Active Member
Dash,
It's our nature to explore, otherwise we would still be living naked on a savana, or extinct.
Probably the latter! (And then - imagine: No Gauge! :( :D )

In earnest: Compare the money which is spent for such an exploring mission with the amount which is spent for warfare. Then you see that the NASA budget (which really is a quite a heap, too) is a mere pocket money compared to a military budget. Now if you could use THAT money for food and health!!!

Bill, your priorities are dead right - if only human nature could advance to a state where mankind really would be human!

But never forget, the development of such space vehicles advances technology immensely. And we all have the benefit of this. Hadn't it been for the race to the moon in the '60s, perhaps we still had slow and unreliable analog computers which would fill whole gymnasiums. The same holds true for modern plastics (e.g. Teflon), ceramic and special metallic materials, and so on - lots of side products of space technolgy.

They say, war is the father of all things - meaning that warfare development advances inventions and technolgy. IMHO the NASA programs clearly generated more all-day-useable spin-offs than the development of 'intelligent' mass destruction weapons. We needn't even speak of the respective gain of scientific knowledge for mankind - NASA wins hands down!

Ron

PS: Yep, the pics really look like an Arizona sunset... Oh well, it could be New Mexico, too... :D :D :D
 
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Fred_M

Originally posted by RailRon
Dash,



They say, war is the father of all things - meaning that warfare development advances inventions and technolgy. IMHO the NASA programs clearly generated more all-day-useable spin-offs than the development of 'intelligent' mass destruction weapons. We needn't even speak of the respective gain of scientific knowledge for mankind - NASA wins hands down!

Ron
I'll have to correct/disagree with that statement Ron. NASA and the space program were spun-off from the defense industry. The first men in space rode up there on ICBMs to show the other side their nations Kung Fu. The Space Program was just another fighting front in the Cold War. Nasa didn't develope computers to fly to the moon, the war department (British) did to decode coded messages. NASA used ICBM flight computers and Airforce/Navy navagational equipment to get us into space and to the moon. Most everything NASA used/uses was really military technology. We just pretended NASA was a civilian endevor. DASH
 
I love it

I think how glad I am to be an American when I see we put another rover in Mars like we did in 1998. We needed some positive news since columbia disaster. When man puts his mind to it, its amazing where we can go, what we can create, and whats still left to explore.

I understand the $ involved, but we could have helped millions of americans with $87 Billion that went to Iraq.

The Japanese and Europeans both attempted Mars this year, they failed...We suceeded.

Who knows, if we find proof of life on Mars, it may be an incentive for all countries to put aside their differences and unite us as Earthlings. Okay, I've watched independence day too many times!:rolleyes:
 

RailRon

Active Member
The Space Program was just another fighting front in the Cold War.
You are right, Dash - after the Sputnik shock 1957, when the Russions were first in space with a satellite and then two years later with a man, Kennedy kicked off the 'race to the moon' program to restore American supremacy in technology. And for this ambition, military technology (and money!) was the only way to go.

Perhaps I expressed myself a bit clumsily (after all, German is still my native language). All sorts of technology can be used for the bad or the good. What I wanted to say, is that the technological spin-off of the NASA for all of us is greater than what we would have got, if all that rocketry and computer science had stayed exclusively in the hands of the military.

csxengineer:
The Japanese and Europeans both attempted Mars this year, they failed...We suceeded.

Hehehe, I'd say 'give a few, take a few': The USA had also their share of flops with Mars landers, but luckily now with 'Spirit' they got a full success. Let's cross fingers that 'Opportunity' will succeed, too! :thumb:

And no, the European Mars Express didn't fail. The main program was to install an orbiting station around Mars for at least two years, which will make measurements of the whole planet surface, looking for traces of water etc. And this part works flawlessly. On the other side, the Mars lander failed obviously - we didn't get any response from it after it 'landed' (most probably crashed :()

I'm also a little bit proud of the NASA successes of Mars Rover and now Spirit, because their little electric motors are 'Made in Switzerland'. The Maxon firm is about 30 miles from my home, and the same tiny motors make great motors for model locomotives! (However, some of them cost as much as a whole loco... :rolleyes: )

Ron
 

jon-monon

Active Member
Originally posted by RailRon

But never forget, the development of such space vehicles advances technology immensely. And we all have the benefit of this. Hadn't it been for the race to the moon in the '60s, perhaps we still had slow and unreliable analog computers which would fill whole gymnasiums. The same holds true for modern plastics (e.g. Teflon), ceramic and special metallic materials, and so on - lots of side products of space technolgy.

Not to forget yummy sweet orange powdered instant TANG! :D :D :D
 
I still dunno.....

You guys make points that are likely valid, and I would be prone to agree..... but:

Although, with Portugese funding, Columbus accidentally “discovered” the new world, there were quite a few people already on this continent whose ghosts, were they given a vote, might question whether his trip was a good thing in the long run.

Sure, war and the space program contribute to technological advances which we are all happily consuming. But I cannot think that nuclear technology has made this planet a more charming place to live. Jet planes make my travel quicker, but more fun? Computers are a terrific drafting tool, give me quicker and broader access to information, and faster (if somewhat stilted) communications with friends and relatives throughout the world, but does any of that make me a better (or happier) person? Plastics bring me incredibly well detailed model railroad stuff, but are my hobby hours any more fulfilling than those of some guy soldering pieces of tomato can together to make only a fair looking, fair running loco model in 1939?

If some guy wants to climb Everest “because it’s there” that’s fine with me. His little obsession doesn’t cost me much of anything. And maybe I’ll see a pretty photo of the top of the world as a result. But, although the costs are hidden in convoluted, untranslatable budgets, I suspect that this would be a better world for ALL of us if we got our “positive news” through spending more on people --- feeding them until we can educate them so they can feed (and capably, ethically, rationally govern) themselves --- rather than on fascinating explorations and highly questionable wars.

We cannot, I suppose, stop progress, but we can sure question it --- particularly when it's so expensive. But now I'm gonna climb down off my soap box and start thinking about important stuff.

Like Model railroading, for instance.....

BillS
 
chilling fact..

Discovery Channel said:

If everybody in 3rd world countries lived like Americans (size of house, yard, food intake, natural resources consumed), we would need 2 more planets!

wooooo
 
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Fred_M

Re: chilling fact..

Originally posted by csxengineer
Discovery Channel said:

If everybody in 3rd world countries lived like Americans (size of house, yard, food intake, natural resources consumed), we would need 2 more planets!

wooooo
You also have to consider the source of that soundbite...the Discovery Channel. Kind of like Barbra Strisand's rhetoric about conserving the envioroment and resources while she drives an SUV and/or limo from her 100 room mansion on the fragile California coast to the airport to fly on her private jet to London for brunch and a day of shopping. Makes me want to cut back on my lifestyle, yes it does. DASH
 

CN1

Active Member
Mars Landscape and Discovery table.

http://cmex-www.arc.nasa.gov/CMEX/New Martian Landsca.html
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argstand-sm.jpg
 

roryglasgow

Active Member
Although I agree that money for space exploration could be spent "at home," there's still plenty of resources to make sure that everyone is fed and has a place to live. *WE JUST HAVE TO DO IT.* Afterall, is it really that important to get just one more locomotive for the layout? The cost of a decent loco would feed several for a quite a while...

Government is far too unwieldy a beast to be depended on to cover all human welfare needs. It takes individuals and small groups to take up the slack...
 
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