NASA TV

[moot]

these missions to a dry barren ball as a waste of money and effort

  A waste of money and effort, not "a waste of your money."

You certainly have the right to express your opinion and dissent, and I can point out how crooked it all looks given the context of your previous posts.. 

"Knowing people who are older and perhaps wiser is not the same as being that yourself."  Well are you going to just insinuate it, or explicitely say you can read my mind and know I didn't learn from their wisdom, and specificaly didn't learn that "It is possible to yearn for more while counting it's cost. When you get older you may understand this." ? You're not even close.. And context such as your clinging to bogus mysticism like ID (all the while denouncing GW and other instances scientific dogmatism) tips the scales further to 'erroneous', in my eyes.

I still say that it's bogus to resume a mission like phoenix to "a waste of money and effort", and calling the profitable results in recent decades from the drive for knowledge "unexpected", in so far as missions like these (if that's what you're refering to) were going to chart what's nearly 'terra incognita'.  How could they not yield unexpected results?  How could they not be worth the small fraction of the agency's 0.5% of the budget?

[DiabloTX]

The Phoenix Lander onboard computer is so cutting edge...it couldn't even run Aces High I on it.

"The computer has a maximum clock rate of 33 MHz and a processing speed of about 35 MIPS. In addition to the CPU itself, the RAD6000 has 128 MB of ECC RAM. A typical RTOS running on NASA's RAD6000 installations is VxWorks. The Flight boards in the above systems have switchable clock rates of 2.5, 5, 10, or 20 MHz."

[zoozoo]

Quote from the NASA PM of the project today as the Phoenix completes it's 10 month journey to Mars and lands successfully:

“It was better than we could have possibly wished for,” said Barry Goldstein, the project manager for the mission.

 It landed, how can that be better than expected? Were they epecting it to crash as the other one did of the dame design?  Guess that's what you get for $400+ million. 

Thats really weird.

I watched the movie about the two landers today on science channel. THe whole  process was truely spectacular. 

[moot]

The Phoenix Lander onboard computer is so cutting edge...it couldn't even run Aces High I on it.

I think if you're designing computerized hardware that's going to be limited to specific tasks, it's more efficient to move as much of the software down to firmware or even further.. It's more effective in power consumption and productivity, I think.  IIRC the link bandwidth is just a few dozen kbps.

[DiabloTX]

Sorry moot, I wasn't trying to convey a literal meaning, just sort of an illustration of it's limited capabilities.

[splitatom]

didnt last time they miss mars completeley

[moot]

Just running with the thought.. I was surprised too, the first time I noticed that trait in other leading edge tech.
They really have to trim all the fat down to the bare minimums on these machines.. I think they opted out of a onboard camera filming the descent to avoid any risk of interference with the other systems.  It was one of the top few factors in the decision, and IIRC it was one of the possible causes for the previous probe's crash.  Really sensitive stuff.

[Hornet33]

I can't belive some of you guys are complaining about the cost of sending this probe to Mars. The cost was what?? $400 million?? Guess what, they could have done several mission for the price of ONE B-2 bomber

These guys at JPL and NASA built, launched, flew to anouther planet, and landed a spacecraft, unmanned, for less than half the cost of the worlds most advanced bomber.

I fail to see where they have wasted my money as a taxpayer. The money was spent on hard science. The engineering used to fly this mission can and probably will have future broad range applications for many things that we will take for granted in the future.

I would rather see money spent on this type of science and exploration, than on wellfare, illegal imigration reform, and socialized medicine. This country throws away billions of dollars every year and gets absolutely NOTHING in return for it. This mission will at least give us knowledge about one of our neighbors in the solar system, and do so at a bargin compared to some of the things we spend money on.

[moot]

The only gripe I have with this mission is that it seems they might be giving too much importance to life/habitability... "Too much" being subjective. But it's undeniably a very significant aspect, so it has to be done.. So they might as well get it done, and it's not so bad considering all the other science that'll get done.

Maybe it's bias on my part, but if there's been life on Mars, I reckon finding it'll be like a needle in a haystack, and won't be found till we're over there in person.. and even then I'd expect it to take us a few years of exploring before we hit the jackpot and find some undeniable footprint of past life.  Or with a lot of luck, of present microscopic life.  But even in the worst scenarios, it's a prospect that's got to be near the top of any short list of things to investigate out in space.

[DPQ5]

heres some more pics from the probe

[wrongwayric]

It's all done on a hollywood film lot!!! Nothing got launched or landed but some wallets did get fatter. Just like the lunar landings it's all smoke and mirrors.

Let the rocks be hurled gents.

On the serious side i think a manned mission is in order. What guy wouldn't want a 20 month plus round trip without his wife nagging him as he drove?

[WilldCrd]

It's all done on a hollywood film lot!!! Nothing got launched or landed but some wallets did get fatter. Just like the lunar landings it's all smoke and mirrors.

Let the rocks be hurled gents.

On the serious side i think a manned mission is in order. What guy wouldn't want a 20 month plus round trip without his wife nagging him as he drove?

Oh GOD where do I sign up!!!!

[OOZ662]

didnt last time they miss mars completeley

I'd like to see you hit it with something the size of a car.

(Actually, I have no idea how big it is.)

[Strip]

With the solar arrays not deployed its about 4' by 4'.

Deployed.......5' by 10'

Strip

[LePaul]

You realize space exploration is like way under 1% of the GNP, right?  Back in the Apollo/Space Race days, it was much higher.

I wish we could spend more on it, we are natural born explorers to learn more about our surroundings.  Thankfully private enterprise is starting to come online to take some of the load off government (see SpaceX).