Comic Fury Webcomic Hosting - Mars landing

I watched the NASA live feed this afternoon or the Curiosity landing on Mars. Initially there was not much to see as there was no feed during the landing from the space craft. Everybody in Mission Control went mad when it landed safely though.



And what was all the trouble over? About photos like this:



Doesn't look like much, but that photo's come a long long way. :)


Been a space fan since '67. Nice to see it live for once.

Lets talk about the good looking scientists instead of the achievements made with this mission.

Why are we still in B&W-grainy-photoland? You'd think this is the Apollo moon landing.
Why aren't we looking at color HD photos? I know it's from Mars, but a signal is a signal.
There was a lot of streamed scientist lovin' when the landing confirmation came back, I know that much.
And did you see how they landed the thing? It looked like some flimsy contraption out of an old 007 movie.

Oh, I love this. Funny how pictures of gravel can be so interesting =)

If I got it right, the first photos are taken with the Hazard Avoidance Cameras whose purpose is to prevent the Curiosity from bumping into stuff. Then, once they deploy the Mast Cam thingy, it will be able to send high resolution color images back to boring old Earth. I could be wrong, though, since space technology isn't exactly my strong point.

One of the goals of the rover is to determine whether there has ever been life on Mars. Which is cool.

Be kind, space travel is still a very new thing, and thus we get the silly looking methods to land rovers. Still, it really is amazing that we can send "explorers" to another planet. It's sci-fi coming to life!

"How do we land a robot the size of a car??" :'

"How about a parachute... WITH ROCKETS!!" 8D

I am also fairly certain that there will be better photos as that is just from the hazard avoidance camera. It was just so exciting to watch, to see their joy when the finally knew it landed safe.

I know this is kinda out there. But if they do find life, any kind of it, either present now or the past. What would be the reaction back home. How stoked would they be?

That's awesome, DAJB!

I watched the UStream last night, the excitement coming from NASA's control panel was absolutely contagious. I really hope this gets people interested in space again, and hopefully more money gets sent to NASA's way. They deserve every penny!

Funny/infuriating related story, apparently some footage NASA uploaded of the landing to their official YouTube page was removed due to copyright violations by some folks called Scripps Local News.

A few hours of NASA probably gnawing on some YouTube arse got the video restored, but still, kind of amusing to see how shoddy YouTube becomes with each passing day.

While one could try to appreciate their desperation at not being the next megaupload, they have to admit its a losing battle at some point, as people and companies have a limited attention span and differing policies on the matter.

And so many sci-fi films have us zapping thru inter-stellar space at multi-times light speed only 50 to 100 years from now. Man, have we got work to do!

I don't see any canals - what happened to the canals?

Wait, I've seen this before. Another robot, long ago....wait...ah!

Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!

John Carter mobilized the entire Barsoomian work force to fill them in an effort to discredit Percival Lowell just the same way he had them more recently deface the face on Mars to try to discredit Richard C Hoagland. But we know the truth.

As to what will happen when Curiosity chases down a thark we don't know, but you know that laser can hurt animals if it can burn rocks.

Wonder if the first astronauts to land will come equipped with a set of chairs to put on the rover to ride around? After all Curiousity is built for a very, very long haul.

And grainy B&W pictures don't take up bandwidth which is all important when beaming info from millions of miles away. So you want quick pictures? B&W and grainy. Want HD? Expect a long wait to pick it up.

Landing was sorta complicated, which is why they used something like this:



The funny thing was that I saw a segment on Good Game Spawn Pointabout the game NASA released for the X-Box about this!



And here's some colour pics



The reason there's less colour than B&WQ shots is a bandwidth problem.

And even if NASA continues to get shafted, Yay SpaceX and related endeavors!